Newsletter of the Biological Survey of Canada (Terrestrial Arthropods)

2. BSC e-journal of Arthropod Identification
The BSC e-journal of arthropod identification continues to be developed with a target launch date in 2006. The Committee discussed several issues including cross postings of identification products, copyright, the range of items that could be published, editorial policies, and author guidelines.

3. Terrestrial arthropods of Newfoundland and Labrador
Work continues on a number of keys although a great deal of work is needed to prepare illustrations. The keys to the Curculionidae should be complete by the spring of 2006 and will be submitted to the BSC e-journal. The 2006 BioBlitz is being planned for Gros Morne National Park and other sites on the west coast of Newfoundland. Work on the Lepidoptera of Newfoundland has commenced.

4. Forest arthropods
The 2005 BioBlitz, held in Waterton Lakes National Park in July, was very successful, attracting no less than 30 participants from Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. Parks Canada provided great support and Waterton Lakes National Park will manage the database of specimen records. Issue number 2 of the Forest Arthropods newsletter will be published in March 2006. Progress with the project on Cerambycidae of Canada and Alaska has been excellent. The database of Forest Biodiversity projects will be updated by March 2006. The symposium on Maintaining arthropods in northern forest ecosystems was held at the ESC annual meeting and a set of 7 manuscripts will be published in the Canadian Entomologist.

5. Insects of the Arctic
Collecting was done in the Norman Wells, NWT area in the summer of 2005 in collaboration with local wildlife personnel. Residues from a Malaise trap will be available from Dr. Doug Currie who is currently extracting the biting flies from those samples. Dr. Currie and Dr. Peter Adler spent a month in eastern Siberia collecting blackflies. Dr. Donna Giberson and Dr. Jade Savage were in Rankin Inlet this past summer. Dr. Buddle did some pitfall trapping in the Yukon and also has material people might be interested in.

6. Seasonal adaptations
A number of papers on this topic have been published or are in press, including ones in the Journal of Insect Physiology and in Applied Entomology and Zoology. Dr. Danks attended the International Symposium on Ecophysiology of Ectotherms and Plants in Denmark. He was an invited speaker in a symposium in Japan on environmental change, part of an international meeting under the auspices of a well-funded centre of excellence at Kyoto University (linked to entomimetic sciences).

7. Invasions and reductions
A one-day symposium on the impacts of exotic arthropods (and possibly also of plants and fungi) on native biota is planned to precede the Joint Annual Meeting in Montreal in November 2006. Work continues to catalogue all non-native arthropods of Canada. About 1700 species have been catalogued thus far and the final number is expected to exceed 2000. Additional information is being collected about each species, general distribution, origin, date and place of introduction, hosts, key references, etc. A joint BSC-CFS database will be housed by the CFS and accessible through a web site interface.

Progress on the specific project on coccinellids in the context of invasive species was reported. For now, this project is proceeding with people in individual regions publishing independently. Some forthcoming publications may stimulate interest in this project.

The site is in the process of being redesigned and reorganized. In addition to giving the look of the site a minor facelift the focus has been on reorganizing the menu structure of the site to be more logical and with clearer labels. The revised pages will be posted when all translations and technical issues have been resolved.

2. Survey publicity
Two flags with the BSC logo were produced and made available for Committee members to use for publicity. One was used at the BioBlitz held at Waterton National Park.

4. Arthropods of the Gulf of St. Lawrence Islands
This project is in its early stages. A number of researchers have or are planning to do fieldwork on islands such as the Magdalen Islands, Cape Breton and PEI.

5. Databasing
There seems to be general agreement that the Darwin Core set of fields should be adopted and made congruent with GBIF standards. Global support for the concept of DiGIR sites or equivalent so that the databases can be searched simultaneously is increasing. The Canadian Arachnologist On-line Spider Database was discussed as an example of an online biodiversity database that could quickly be developed using freeware and inexpensive equipment (and see the BSC Newsletter Vol. 24(2): 53-55). However, having a community of interested people to submit data may be more of a challenge than the technical structure. Major initiatives such as the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Agency project on databasing the National Land and Water Information System, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency systems to monitor invasive exotic species were discussed.

The BSC's database of important historic collecting localities continues to be compiled.

6. Biodiversity sampling brief
The Committee has proposed revising and expanding the Survey's 1994 biodiversity brief on planning a study and recommended sampling techniques, and perhaps discussing its inclusion into the revised volume 1 of the handbook series currently being planned at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The Committee also discussed having a component of the Survey’s web site that dealt with survey methods.

7. Other priorities
The Committee also considered potential work on endangered species, some potential future publications and other topics.

Due to the location and abbreviated nature of this meeting representatives from other agencies were not able to attend. However, a written report about activities at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada was received from Dr. Jean-François Landry.

Dr. Barry Grace is acting National Science Director for the Biodiversity Theme, to which all taxonomists working at the CNC belong. Two new research scientists (a phytophagous mite systematist and a plant nematode systematist) are expected to be hired by January 2006. Funding from a 5-year AAFC National Land and Water Information System (NLWIS) initiative will allow the hiring of six people to database entomology, botany, and mycology collections, initially focusing on invasive alien species. A Biodiversity Informatics Research Biologist will be hired to supervise system customization and data entry personnel involved in databasing the CNC through the NLWIS initiative.

Dr. Don Bright has been retired for some time from his research position on bark beetles at the CNC and will be moving permanently to Boulder, Colorado. Under an agreement with AAFC, he will maintain a responsibility for providing bark beetle identifications on an ad-hoc basis. Mr. Jim Troubridge is the new collection manager at CNC. In this new position he will be responsible for overseeing maintenance of the collection, processing of donations and acquisitions, and supply procurement.

There are plans to purchase a new high-end imaging system system before March 31, 2006. This will be a much awaited, badly needed tool for CNC systematists, whose need for high-quality digital photos requires an efficient system for capturing and processing images.

Production of new volumes in the Insects and Arachnids of Canada handbook series is continuing. The Histeridae of Canada by Bousquet and Laplante is currently in press and publication is expected before the end of 2005. The Root Weevils of Canada by Bright and Bouchard is accepted for publication with expected publication in 2006. The Ticks of Canada by Lindquist, Galloway et al. is accepted with expected publication also in 2006. Dr. Pat Bouchard and Dr. Yves Bousquet are working on a handbook of the Tenebrionidae of Canada, a project still in early draft stage. Dr. Ales Smetana continues to work on the multi-authored catalogue series of Palaearctic Coleoptera. Dr. Landry has completed a catalogue of the world Coleophoridae, co-authored with two European lepidopterists.

AAFC is one of the partners in the Barcoding of Life project, based at the University of Guelph, which includes many other players, with scientists focusing on different groups of organisms. Lafontaine, Landry and Troubridge are working closely with Paul Hebert on the Lepidoptera. Results are already very useful for working taxonomy in allowing correct sex and immature stage associations, discovering cryptic species, and confirming suspected sibling species pairs. Building a comprehensive barcode library will take several years.

The CMN organized an all day workshop in Ottawa during October to discuss potential development of the BSC, attended by government representatives, members of the Alliance of Natural History Museums, and scientific society representatives.

2. Other matters
The Committee also considered briefly issues such as the BSC award through the ESC, membership of the Scientific Committee, and items of more general interest from regional information.