The great Ohio collecting trip of '14

I've just returned to Arkansas after 3 weeks of sampling in Ohio for millipedes, in what was a very fruitful collecting trip. The trip was funded with a grant from the Ohio Biological Survey, and I was able to find many of the species I was after.

A series of posts about some of the places I went will follow in the coming weeks, as will an account of my adventures. Currently I'm still recovering from the trip (not to mention the 10 hour drive yesterday), so writing will come into full swing as my energy returns. I'll also be recounting my experience at Mothapalooza, which was a lot of fun.

Traveling, grad school life, and some other personal stuff has kept me from blogging as much as I'd like, so I'll try to use my Ohio trip as a springboard for more posts soon. That will help me remember more of my trip, and act as a nice compendium of my exploits from the past few weeks.

I was able to outrun storms, survive nearly being run off the highway by an inattentive driver, grit my teeth through the stinging nettle, and deal with the tediousness of bad collecting days to end up with a few boxes of millipedes. All in all, it was a good collecting trip, and I was able to visit some of Ohio's most beautiful places. Now to sift through the samples, catalog their records and the photographs I took, and clean up the mess I brought back to my apartment!

As a teaser, here are three species of Xystodesmids from Cantwell Cliffs in the Hocking Hills of Ohio.