South American Subsocial Beetles

Some manuscripts take a long time to gestate, some go fast. A Short Communication is even faster to write when it comes on the tail of a bigger synthesis. After Chaboo et al. (2015), my colleagues were all on alert to look for more subsocial cassys (subsocial= adult caring for one brood).  Within a few…

Let’s Disco!

It began in autumn 2009.  Wills Flowers, recently retired from Florida A & M University (FAMU) emailed me from Ecuador, where he was doing researcher and teaching on USAID funds.  At the Pichilingue Field Station, Quevedo, Wills noticed nasty ants interfering with a beautiful blue-black adult cassidine. The plant was chopped down but the beetle was…

NSF grant news!

After a few tries, we finally landed a grant from the US NSF-EAGER program to study aspects of our arms-race model of defenses in leaf beetles!  While most arms-race evolutionary models have focused on plant-insect herbivore interactions, Co-PIs Dr. Ken Keefover-Ring, U. Wisconsin-Madison, WI and Dr. Paula “Alex” Trillo, Gettysburg College, PA, will use this 2-yr award…