Meeting 1218 Minutes

The 1218th meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club was called to order at 7:35pm on Tuesday May 10th 2022. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting was held on Zoom. Approx. 21 members and guests were in attendance.

New business:

The slate of officers for 2022-2023 was approved:

President: Jessie Thuma

Vice-president: Katherine Angier

Secretary: Andrea Golden

Treasurer: Jay Shetterly

Executive Committee: Scott Smyers

Karina Bellavia was nominated for membership.

After two years of Zoom meetings, the Club may return to in-person in meetings in October. Remote members have requested a hybrid “Zoom” option.

Sarah Dendy, a graduate student in James Mallet’s lab, is looking for volunteers to help with a summer moth survey.

Old business:

Scott Smyers attended the April Northeast Natural History Conference, presenting a session entitled The Value and Need for Regional Clubs and Societies Focused on Entomology or Botany.

Our speaker was Dr. Christina Kwapich, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at U/Mass Lowell. Her talk was entitled The economics of granivorous ant societies.

Ant colonies must offset worker mortality with new worker production at the end of each annual cycle. Dr. Kwapich’s talk discussed food and labor allocation that allow granivorous ant societies to balance their annual budget. She first shared observations about a polymorphic desert seed harvester, Veromessor pergandei, how its colonies utilize older ants as foragers, variations in reproductive capacity of the queens, and how worker size affects the structure of colonies.

For the second part of her talk she discussed another seed harvester Pogonomyrmex badius, the seasonal development rate of colonies, and how P. badius colonies handle seed resources, for instance, allowing seeds too large to open initially to germinate, and the age structure of older forager vs. younger sister workers.

She mentioned a myrmecophile, Hymenorus tschinkeli, and also a new book she co-authored with Bert Hölldobler, The Guests of Ants: How Myrmecophiles Interact with their Hosts, to be published in July.

For more information, visit the Kwapich lab website.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:18 pm.

Respectfully submitted, Andrea Golden, CEC Secretary