Angelo Coast Range Reserve

13 Jun, 09 AM - 16 Jun, 02 AM

Our proposed brief fieldwork to collect beetles for a few days at Angelo Reserve is a small part of a large multi-institutional project, ?Assembling the Beetle Tree of Life,? that seeks to develop a robust phylogenetic hypothesis for the relationships among the major lineages of beetles. We will be collecting in various areas of California during June 2006, focusing primarily on rove beetles (family Staphylinidae) and their relatives (the even more obscure families Agyrtidae, Leiodidae, Ptiliidae, Hydraenidae, Scydmaenidae, Silphidae, Hydrophilidae [in a broad sense], Histeridae, Sphaeritidae, and Synteliidae, the last one not known from California). These beetles tend to be cryptic in their habits and thus generally under-collected and relatively poorly known; most live in mesic to wet forested areas, and northern California has a particularly rich fauna. The diversity of such habitats at the Angelo Reserve and the availability of accommodations so close to them makes it an attractive spot for part of our work. The methods we will use are especially targeted toward collecting about two dozen taxa most critically needed for the AToL project, and will include: (1) using Berlese/Tullgren funnels to extract arthropods from samples of sifted or unsifted leaf & log litter, moss, stream-edge debris, and similar substrates and (2) various types of hand collecting, e.g., on fungi, under bark of logs, under logs and stones, in flowers, on foliage, at stream banks, and at light (ultraviolet or white). These methods can be expected to have minimal impact on the local environment. Most specimens will be preserved immediately, though a few may be kept alive to attempt rearing larvae to adults or obtaining eggs and larvae from adults to solidify the association of adults and larvae. In any case, we will not release live specimens elsewhere than their places of origin. To a lesser extent, we will also be looking for beetle species in other groups needed by other collaborators in the ATOL project. All material will be deposited in recognized institutional collections, primarily the Field Museum; representatives will also be deposited in the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (whose Curator of Entomology, Dr. Michael Caterino, is collaborating with us on the Staphyliniformia part of the BToL project) and smaller numbers in a few other institutions as taxonomically appropriate. If the Essig Museum at UCB serves as a reference repository for the reserve, we could deposit some representatives there as well. As with other material in these museum collections, the specimens will be made freely available for study by recognized researchers and thus will also benefit other current and future research projects by ourselves and others and contribute to enhancing knowledge of California?s rich and unique fauna. The project duration dates (except in the form describing the whole grant subcontract) are for the projected field work at Angelo. We may need to make a slight adjustment to the actual dates at the reserve (if possible) as our itinerary firms up.

Visit #9859 @Angelo Coast Range Reserve

Approved

Under Project # 6651 | Research

BToL: Assembling the Beetle Tree of Life (Staphyliniformia TWiG)

other - Field Museum of Natural History

Reservation Members(s)

Group of 2 Research Scientist/Post Doc Jun 13 - 16, 2006 (4 days)

Reserve Resources(s) | Create Invoice

HQ House 2 Jun 13 - 16, 2006
Lab 2 Jun 13 - 16, 2006