Symposium accepted: ESA 2017

A symposium I'm organizing with Deb Paul and Pam Soltis, from iDigBio, has been accepted as a SysEB (Systematics and Evolutionary Biology) Section symposium for Entomology 2017, 65th Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America, being held November 5-8, 2017 in Denver, Colorado.
Abstracts? Recordings? Who? Here is the wiki page.

Our symposium aims to showcase research, extension, and education projects that are benefiting from the biodiversity data captured thanks to collection digitization projects, including applications in systematics, ecology, conservation, crop protection, and public health, demonstrating the importance of integration across disciplines with the intent to inspire new projects.

Big Data and Bugs: How Massively Collected Biodiversity Data Are Changing the Way We Do Insect Science will take place on Sunday, November 5, 2017, from 1:30 PM-5:30 PM

MOBILE-IPM RELEASED FOR TESTING

(15 May 2016) The app is available for Android, iPhone and via browser (yes, on the computer, or blackberry), but you need to register with us to get it (sorry, at this time, Canada testing only)!
More information http://mobile-ipm.com

ICE 2016 XXV International Congress of Entomology - Entomology Without Borders

The symposium I helped organize at ICE 2016 is getting on the map!
Symposium program
iDigBio calendar feature
Happy we could pull this off! Expecting a pretty interesting round table at the end!

Mobile-IPM app update

(31 Mar 2016) Information for Canadian users testing Mobile-IPM app:

• app landing page updated with new screen shots, etc. is up
• access to password-protected admin interface is ready, announced at PPMN meeting earlier this month
• launch for field season 2016 set for 3rd week of April - sign up here if you want to participate 
• access to documentation and instructions pages announced at Mobile-IPM mail newsletter - sign up here if you want to get those emails

Old "Página de Chalcidoidea" resurrected!

(30 Nov 2015) "Página de Chalcidoidea" was my attempt to organize a site with basic information and literature lists for Neotropical Chalcidoidea, in Brazilian Portuguese, Chalcidoidea: Biologia, Sistemática e Classificação (link to Internet Archive), published for the first time late in 2004. It went offline in 2008 after a major server problem, and officially died in 2012.

Ten years later there's still an absurd lack of resources in Portuguese ☹ , the PT Wikipedia is still a bad joke, books are still incredibly expensive by any standard, and many more academics that I ever thought are excluded from recent advances because they don't know English. Plus, I came to terms with the fact that I can't dedicate my time to keep server space and won't have a University home space anytime soon, so I settled for the blog post format/hosting. HERE it is -- all pages migrated, and I'll make them public as I update them with new references and info.

Book out:

(9 Nov 2015) "Ensaios sobre as Abelhas da Região Neotropical" ("Essays on Bees from the Neotropical Region") is a festshrift celebrating the career of Dr. Danuncia Urban from Universidade Federal do Paraná. I was lucky to help kicking this off with the first chapter, which includes biographical notes based on interviews and a complete list of her publications. Danuncia is one of the most prominent living taxonomists in Neotropical bees and described over 300 new taxa. She is an inspiration to everyone who has worked with her. The complete opposite of the stereotype taxonomist-- friendly, sweet, humble, always willing to share all she knows. :-)

The book is available from Editora UFPR (ISBN 9788584800117). Chapters are in English and Portuguese. Table of contents here.