Thu, February 16, 2017 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM BEATY BIODIVERSITY CENTRE. Come by for a night at the museum!
Every month, the museum will stay open late with admission by donation between 5:00-8:30 pm, offering family-friendly activities. This month features special guest Robert Anderson from the Canadian Museum of Nature.
5:15 pm: Raising Big Blue showing in the auditorium
6:00 pm: Robert Anderson's presentation Scraping the Surface: Hunting beetles in Central America
7:00 pm: Guided Museum Tour
All evening: Hands-on activities where you can learn more about specimens in the museum and our current exhibitions
Scraping the Surface: Hunting beetles in Central America
“I feel like an old warhorse at the sound of a trumpet when I read about the capturing of rare beetles.” Charles Darwin wrote in a letter to botanist J.D. Hooker in 1858, endearing him to the hearts of coleopterists (people who study beetles) ever since.
As a coleopterist, nothing gets Dr. Robert Anderson’s heart racing like news of successful field trips in which rare or new species of beetles were caught. An expert in the weevil family, Bob’s 28 year career has included a range of field work in exotic and often dangerous locales. His work on beetles has been used in identifying hotspots of biodiversity, in conservation planning and in work on endangered species.
Join Bob as he recounts his journeys across Latin America, New Zealand, Australia and Papua New Guinea. Specifically, Bob will share results from the Leaf Litter Arthropods of MesoAmerica (LLAMA) project (2008-2011). Funded by the National Science Foundation, and involving some 40 students and scientists from 5 Central American countries, the project collected over a million specimens of arthropods, most of these new to science. See how successful field work is carried out and review some of the exciting new beetle discoveries made during the project that suggest we are really still just scraping the surface of insect diversity.