Episode 4: New Species-- of Happy Face spiders in Hawaii!

02/09/21 • 32 min

Our guest for this episode, Dr. Rosemary Gillespie, is a professor of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, professor in the Division of Insect Biology, and Director of the Essig Museum of Entomology at the University of California - Berkeley. She talks to us about her paper that will be published in the next issue of Invertebrate Systematics wherein she and her coauthors describe *eight* new species of Happy Face spiders from Hawaii. We talk about why these spiders are called Happy Face spiders, how they got to Hawaii, and why they are important in the Hawaiian ecosystem.

The title of the paper is “A happy family: systematic revision of the endemic Theridion spiders of the Hawaiian Islands” The paper is available free as Open Access through the month of February at https://www.publish.csiro.au/IS/IS20001.

To learn more about Dr. Gillespie, follow her on Twitter @Berkeley_Evolab or Instagram berkeley.evolab, or find her at https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/rosemary-g-gillespie. Follow first author on the paper, Adrià Bellvert, on Twitter @AdriaBellvert, or follow the senior author, Dr. Miquel Arnedo, on Twitter @MiquelArnedo. You can also follow Dr. Arnedo’s lab on Twitter @spidersysevo.

Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies), like the podcast page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast), and music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom).

If you would like to support this podcast: https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPodcast

If you would like to support this podcast: https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPodcast

Previous Episode

Episode 3: New Species-- a 60 million year old fossil "alligator" from Texas, USA!

Our guest for this episode, Dr. Adam Cossette, is a vertebrate paleontologist and an Assistant Professor of Anatomy working in the College of Osteopathic Medicine at the New York Institute of Technology in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Dr. Cossette talks to us about his recent description of a 60 million year old fossil that is a new species of “alligator,” Bottosaurus fustidens. We talk about how this fossil from Texas was found in an Iowa museum collection, how fossils form, why calling this an “alligator” isn’t technically correct, how the new species got its name, and how a vertebrate paleontologist becomes an anatomy professor for medical students.

The paper was published in the January issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, and the title of the paper is “A new species of Bottosaurus (Alligatoroidea: Caimaninae) from the Black Peaks Formation (Palaeocene) of Texas indicates an early radiation of North American caimanines.” You can see the abstract of the paper at https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article-abstract/191/1/276/5815831?redirectedFrom=fulltext, or contact Dr. Cossette through his university profile page and ask for a copy that he assure me he is willing to give you for free! https://www.nyit.edu/bio/acossett

If you would like to support this podcast: https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPodcast

Next Episode

Episode 5: New Species-- actually, 403 (yes, 403!!) new species of braconid parasitoid wasps from Costa Rica!

Our guest for this episode, Dr. Michael Sharkey, is a Professor Emeritus. He talks to us about his paper published February 2nd in ZooKeys wherein he describes 403—yes, 403!!!—new species of braconid parasitoid wasps from Costa Rica! Dr. Sharkey explains to us what a braconid wasp is, what a parasitoid is, how he and his coauthors could find 403 new species for a single paper, how to come up with so many names for so many species, and why we all need to know more about these amazing little wasps!

The title of the paper is “Minimalist revision and description of 403 new species in 11 subfamilies of Costa Rican braconid parasitoid wasps, including host records for 219 species.” The paper is available free as Open Access: https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/55600/element/8/2105//

To learn more about Dr. Sharkey, visit his webpage at http://www.sharkeylab.org/sharkeylab/MainPage.html.

If you would like to support this podcast: https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPodcast