The Subulate Palpomere | Beetle diversity and the Tree of Life. David Maddison
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Description: Beetle diversity and the Tree of Life. David Maddison
As a result of one of my more traumatic experiences as a graduate student, I became familiar with Knoll’s Law of Media Accuracy, “Everything you read in the newspaper is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.”
It was my second year in graduate school at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and I was spending my time examining adults and larvae of Bembidion subgenus Bracteon in an attempt to infer the phylogeny of the group. I had adults and larvae of most species, but I had no larvae of Bembidion balli , and I really wanted to get them. To do that I needed to capture adults during the breeding season. The best place I knew to find Bembidion balli was a beautiful spot called Paynton Ferry, on the North Saskatche
Bembidion has been in the news recently, because of a paper we published this week. In 2021 Kip Will (UC Berkeley) found a specimen in Jerry and Anne Brown’s ranch in California. He didn’t recognize the species, and so sent it to me; I examined it and sequenced its DNA, and I compared it to other Bembidion , and it became evident that it was a new species. John Sproul provided some DNA sequence data of related species. Our paper in ZooKeys ( Maddison, Sproul, and Will 2023 ) describing it as Bembidion brown
The Subulate Palpomere | Beetle diversity and the Tree of Life. David Maddison
JAM - Home