• Blog
  • About
  • Photos
  • Contact
  Adventures of a 
trainee zoologist

Dr Patrick Kennedy, Radford Lab, University of Bristol | Zoology

email

The giant metallic ceiba borer, Sao Paulo

12/2/2016

0 Comments

 
Spectacular photo taken by Alice on our recent field trip to Brazil! Technically, it's a boring beetle, which seems a bit harsh.

May I present the giant metallic ceiba borer, Euchroma gigantea, modelled by Sam:
Picture
Sexy iridescence there. (Photo by Alice Chadwick)
0 Comments

Radio-tagging Satan in Brazil!

12/1/2016

3 Comments

 
Sitting at Madrid airport on journey back from Sao Paulo, Brazil, where it's been a busy month studying a different paper wasp: the ominously-named Polistes satan.

Why are they called P. satan? I suspect that it's because the first thing you notice in P. satan is that many individuals have a black face with red eyes. Does look fairly satanic. Others have red faces with black splotches. This variation in facial colouration is thought to serve a signalling function, at least in foundresses (paper here). Here, for instance, is a typical black-faced female:
Picture
One of our Polistes satan wasps wearing a miniature radio-tag! (In Pedregulho, Sao Paulo State, Brazil)
The second thing you notice about them is that they prefer stinging whoever isn't wearing the bee suit.

The third thing you notice is that they are all wearing tiny radio-transmitter backpacks.

Wait, what?
Working with Professor Fabio Nascimento's lab at the University of Sao Paulo in Ribeirao Preto, we have once again been using miniature radio-transmitters to study 
Polistes behaviour. This is all part of the project I have been doing in French Guiana and Panama, and follows on from the 2007 work by my supervisor Seirian Sumner (and later fascinating experiments by Thibault Lengronne).

The four of us - Andre de Souza (post-doc at USP), Sam Morris, Alice Chadwick, and me - have spent the month in two field sites (an abandoned farmhouse and a small fazenda, both in a valley near the small town of Pedregulho in the north of Sao Paulo State). The landscape was very different to Panama: not tropical lowland rainforest for 
P. satan​, but rather the transition zone between cerrado and Atlantic forest ecosystems, which seems to be popular with the toucans and looks something like the Yorkshire Dales with more palm trees:
Picture
A bee-suited Sam Morris heads towards the wasps...
Next step is to analyse the pile of data from this blitz month of data-collecting. We have movement networks from the radio-tags, aggression data from behavioural experiments, hydrocarbon samples from the cuticles, microsats for genotyping, and facial colouration for matching with behavioural histories. Lots to be getting on with!

Massive thank you to Fabio (for so generously hosting us at USP and supervising the project), Andre (who had to tolerate dragging a bunch of confused gringos around small Brazilian towns), Sam (who gallantly left his giant dinosaur ants behind to spend a sweaty month dodging wasps and piglets), and Alice (who recklessly followed her crazy boyfriend to Brazil to run around grabbing wasps). Obrigado todos!
Picture
Polistes satan in the hand, ready for paint-marking the wings.
Picture
Doing hydrocarbon extractions at the lab in Ribeirao Preto, which turns out to be where W. D. Hamilton spent his fieldtrip to Brazil in 1964 (this is exciting stuff if you like biology...). (Photo by Alice Chadwick)
Picture
Andre, impersonating a wasp-hunting starfish.
Picture
The road to the field site, through the paradisical valley of toucans.
3 Comments
    Picture

    Field site


    Archives

    June 2020
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    September 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    May 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Blog
  • About
  • Photos
  • Contact