Ohio Natural History Conference 2013

 Greg Smith offered opening remarks.

The 2013 Ohio Natural History Conference took place last Saturday and it was a blast! In case you missed it and want to read about what was discussed, check out my live tweeting of the event on Storify. I was joined in my live tweeting by Sam Evans and Rafael Maia and between the three of us, I think we covered the conference pretty well.

This year's theme was "Natural History in the 21st Century and Beyond," which encompassed the broad topic of how today's technology affects how we tackle the study of natural history. Presentations broached some far-ranging topics, from how museums are adapting, to how DNA barcoding is changing our concept of what a species actually is, to the use of smart phone apps for tracking invasive species. Each talk was apropos to what's happening in the field now and brought up good points to ponder, as well as success stories. I highly encourage you to check out the tweets from the conference to read some of the things the speakers said and to check out links to their projects--maybe you'll find something useful for your research or fun ways to get involved.

Scott Loarie's presentation.

This year's theme was a logical continuation from last year, when the theme was "Citizen Science." The development of the Internet and its data infrastructure, along with the rise of smart phones, has helped citizen science initiatives explode in recent years. This holds vast potential for popularizing natural history in a way that hasn't happened before, and apps/websites have already starting popping up to test the waters. Two of the biggest ones that utilize smart phone photos are Project Noah and iNaturalist. It just so happens that this year, the keynote speaker was the co-creator of iNaturalist, Scott Loarie. The Ohio Biological Survey worked with iNaturalist last year to start a project on the site to record Ohio's biota, the Ohio Bio Blitz.

Scott gave an enlightening presentation about iNaturalist and its accomplishments (including helping to identify some new species) and also covered what citizen science as a whole can accomplish and what it means for the future of natural history research. (Again, check out the tweets to read about specifics.) The main hurdle facing citizen science is being able to guarantee that data gleaned from such initiatives are valid, rigorous, and useful. Scott's presentation proved that this hurdle isn't insurmountable, and hinted at a bright future (and present) for citizen science data.

As always, there were interesting poster presentations prepared by scientists (and nervous university students) from all over Ohio, showcasing a sliver of the research being done throughout our great state. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to peruse many of them, but I was able to meet up with Sam and Rafael to interview Jim McCormac for his thoughts about the conference for a segment to be included in a future episode of the podcast Breaking Bio. We're planning to interview Scott Loarie as well--I'll post a link when the episode is finished.

All in all, it was a mighty fine conference. There seems to be two lines of thought on the debate about how current technology (especially smart phones and the Internet) is affecting natural history and public interest in natural history today. Essentially, all these screens will either destroy natural history or save it and propel it to new heights. There are valid points on each side, but I subscribe to the latter view. After being exposed to a healthy (or unhealthy, depending on your view) amount of technology in the form of video games, computers, and phones all my life, I've turned out fine and have a deep passion for natural history. 

The way I see it, without the technology I've been exposed to, I wouldn't enjoy natural history as much. I've learned how to identify bugs, better my photography skills, access resources hundreds of years old, and amass a huge portion of my natural history knowledge thanks to the Internet and the exposure into the field it's given me. I firmly believe that while technology can be a two-edged sword, it should be embraced by natural historians and used as a new connection to people, especially young scientists wanting to learn more.

I think Greg Smith summed it up best after Scott's keynote: 

"New technology is not meant to replace natural history techniques, but to enhance them."

And come on, for those of you who study bugs, who hasn't used Bug Guide to get an identification?

My First Research: Assassin Bug and Millipede Invasion at the ONHC

My posters from the Ohio Natural History Conference are now online! I've updated my post from the conference with links, and also wanted to post them here for easy reference. I was the lead author on my first poster, "A Biological Survey of the Assassin Bugs (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) at the Barbara A. Beiser Field Station", which is posted below. Click this link or right click on the picture and choose "view image" for a larger (and readable) picture.

I was a contributing author on the second poster, titled "UV Fluorescing Millipedes from Southeastern Ohio." There's a lot of interesting questions raised from this research that I would like to investigate. Hopefully it will inspire others to take an interest in millipedes as well.

Note that there is a typo in the first paragraph of the Conclusion section. E. leachii is always found in decaying wood, not in leaf litter.

For more information about the conference, you can read over my first blog post (which has a link to my tweets from the conference), and some news stories from my college here and here.

2012 Ohio Natural History Conference

Columbus, Ohio was THE place to be this past Saturday, for one reason: the Ohio Natural History Conference. Yes, this meetup for natural history enthusiasts was indeed a blast and well worth the wait. This year's theme was citizen science, and all the presentations centered around that theme. There's never been a better time to be a naturalist, considering how easy the Internet is making it (especially if you're interested in Entomology).

This year was the 9th year for the conference, and it marked the 100th year of the Ohio Biological Survey, which sponsors the conference along with the Ohio Division of Wildlife. OBS publishes some great literature on the natural history of Ohio, especially the insects. It will be exciting to see the direction OBS goes in the next 100 years, and you can expect more great research coming from it.

Brian Armitage, former direction of the OBS, speaks about its history.

I was enthralled by every talk, it's extremely exciting to see the barriers between hard science and the general public breaking down. The keynote presentation was given by David Bonter, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. He's the assistant director of citizen science there, and gave a fascinating account of the projects the Lab is doing. 

The biggest takeaway from his presentation was that citizen scientists are gathering solid scientific data on a scale that would be impossible otherwise. On top of that, the participants are volunteers, so that data is free. 

I was livetweeting the conference, which forced me to furiously switch between taking notes and grabbing my Droid to send updates to Twitter. That stream is a better summary of the conference than I could offer here, so head to the Storify link I made for the tweets to read about the presentations that were given.

My favorite part of the conference was presenting my own research in the form of a poster. I've mentioned my summer research on assassin bugs before, but haven't blogged at length about it before. During the process of making the poster, I finally wrote everything down concisely, so I'll make a post about that soon. My poster was entitled "A Biological Survey of the Assassin Bugs (Hemiptera:Reduviidae) at the Barbara A. Beiser Field Station" and I highlighted the seven species of assassin bugs I encountered. I also assisted in the preparation of a poster about millipede fluoresce under UV, "UV Fluorescing Millipedes from Southeastern Ohio."

I had a great experience talking to other interested people about my research, and I'm looking forward to doing it again. I feel like I had a strong poster with interesting research (I mean, how can you beat assassin bugs and millipedes?), and hopefully I'll be talking about it more in the future.

If you couldn't make it out to the conference this year, start planning for next year! There's not a date set yet, but it's usually held during early or mid-February. Maybe I'll present research again next year, what more could you want?