Meeting 1204 Minutes

Minutes from the 1204th Meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club

President Tianzhu Xiong called the 1204th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club to order at 7:40 pm on Tuesday, May 19th. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting was held on Zoom.
Approx. 42 members and guests were in attendance.

Old business:
Due to the pandemic, the April meeting was cancelled. The Appledore field trip scheduled for July was also cancelled. Other field trips may be reconfigured to take social distancing into account.

New business:
Treasurer Sofia Prado-Irwin gave the annual report on the club’s finances.

The slate of officers for 2020-2021 was approved:
President: Sang il Kim
Vice-president: Evan Hoki
Secretary: Andrea Golden
Treasurer: Sofia Prado-Irwin
Executive Committee:
Edward Plekavich
Jay Shetterly
Scott Smyers

Our speaker was CEC President Tianzhu Xiong. His talk was entitled Swallowtails: A kaleidoscope of natural and laboratory hybrids

Tianzhu presented an overview of swallowtails; life history, various tribes, host plants, and global distribution. He followed with a discussion of natural hybridization, generally (but not always) among closely related species. Are natural hybrids important in swallowtail evolution? Tianzhu presented aspects of his study on natural hybrids and the relationship between Papilio syfanius and Papilio maackii: distribution near a zone of environmental shift, utilization of host plants, wing patterns and shape, characteristics of the hybrid zone, and distribution of genetic barriers.

He also discussed work w/ laboratory hybrids: the genetic incompatibilities within the Papilio bianor species complex illustrated in part by an analysis of ovaries from back crosses. 

The meeting was adjourned at 9:20.

Respectfully submitted, Andrea Golden, CEC Secretary