WA trip and parents’ visit

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent some time in WA doing field work. In terms of collecting, it wasn’t that great.  WA doesn’t have a very high diversity of aquatic insects, and the streams have been highly impacted by salinisation, which mayflies aren’t very tolerant of. The southwest corner had some nice streams, but pretty much everywhere else I went had no mayflies at all. Quite disappointing. There was some nice scenery though:

After WA, I flew to Sydney to meet up with my parents, who were visiting for a few weeks. We spent a few rainy days there and saw some of the sights, at some good food and had a relaxing time. Then, we flew to Cairns in northern Queensland and toured through the rainforest a bit, and spent a day snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef:

All in all, a good trip

What I do for work

Yeah, it’s been … awhile, since I last posted. But, I’m still alive and doing well.

Since my last post, I’ve been super busy with all sorts of traveling, parents visiting, a friend visiting, etc etc etc. I spent a few weeks out in southwestern Western Australia collecting and attending the Australian Society for Limnology conference (limnology is the study of inland waters), where I presented a paper “Cryptic species within Edmundsiops hickmani (Baetidae): evidence from mtDNA and nDNA”.  Since I often get asked what the heck it is I actually do for work, I thought the abstract of the paper might be of some interest:

Edmundsiops hickmani Suter (Ephemeroptera:Baetidae) is one of the most common and abundant mayflies in mountain streams in eastern Australia. In order to assess whether the extensive variation observed within the current concept of E. hickmani represents intra- or interspecific variation, a 658bp segment of the mitochondrial gene CO1 was sequenced for 34 specimens from 13 localities in Victoria, Tasmania and NSW. Preliminary results indicate a presence of six genetically distinct groups; mean sequence divergence within groups ranged from 0.1-1.6% and mean between group sequence divergence ranged from 11.5-18.7%. Three of the groups (Tasmania, Otways, subtropical NSW) are geographically separate from the others. The remaining three groups are parapatric or sympatric and occur in Victoria south of the Kiewa R, southern NSW and Victoria north of the Kiewa R, and western Gippsland. In order to test for reproduction isolation, a 462bp segment of the nuclear gene ITS1 was sequenced for the Tasmanian and two Victorian groups. There was no variation within groups and all groups were distinct from each other indicating that there is no genetic exchange among groups. The genetic evidence supports the recognition of six species encompassed by the current concept of E. hickmani. Based on the known distribution of E. hickmani, we predict there will be an additional species from the Grampians. Further work will include sequencing additional populations and loci, and detailed morpholocial comparisons among groups.

Since I gave the paper, we have sequenced a bunch more material and have found the mitochondrial DNA is still supporting the presence of 6 species, even though the all look the same. The nuclear DNA isn’t quite as clear cut – we will have to do further work to really figure out what is going on. All the above work was based on examination of larvae, and I haven’t been able to find any morphological characters to separate them, but I now have adults that I think represent two of the cryptic E. hickmani and have managed to find some differences in them, so the species may not be as cryptic as we thought.

Below is a pic of what the larvae look like (not the most spectacular of insects, but interesting to me!) and an evolutionary tree showing the relationships of the different cryptic species in E. hickmani.

NJ tree of Edmundsiops hickmani