|
|
The retirement of Avas Hamon.
Avas Hamon, the FSCA curator of Hemiptera (Coccidae and Aleyrodidae) for so many years has retired from FDACS-DPI/FSCA and has disappeared into the wilds of
West Virginia never to be seen again. We wish him well in his new adventures. There are rumors that Avas still answers his email at
avas@triadpublishing.com.
We welcome the new curator of Hemiptera (Coccidae and Aleyrodidae),Greg Hodges,to the FSCA.
The
"Whitefly World Catalog" is now on-line. Compiled by Greg Evans, the
Whitefly World Catalog includes a Whitefly taxonomic database, a database of the known Whitefly parasites, and an ecological database.
Report on year 1 of the NSF Collections Improvement Grant to the FSCA.
"Insecta Mundi On-line" is now complete through volume 10
with the table of contents available through 15(1). An author/title index is also complete through 15(1) together with a partial
taxonomic index.
NSF Grant Awarded to the FSCA.
The National Science Foundation has just announced (10 June, 2001) that the Florida State Collection of Arthropods has been awarded a $375,000 Collections Improvement Grant (DBI 0097012). This grant will fund the addition of new cabinets and over 7,000 collection drawers to fully utilize available space in the Museum of Entomology (FSCA). The Museum's total drawer capacity will be increased by about 50% and allow full incorporation of over 1.45 million additional prepared specimens of Lepidoptera, Diptera, Hemiptera, Homoptera, Odonata, Coleoptera, and Orthoptera. We expect to complete the project in 4 years.
This is a very exciting development for the FSCA as it will allow us to work with an enormous number of specimens that are presently in storage with little availability for curation or study. It also will allow us finally to accept some very large and important collections that have been donated to the FSCA but currently cannot be housed.
The biggest and most obvious changes will occur to the "Old Museum", that is, the original museum space in the Doyle Connor Building built to house the insect collection of the old Plant Board. Presently, this room houses Diptera, Hemiptera, Lepidoptera (in part), and minor orders. Prior to 1996, the "Old Museum" held 56 wooden, 48-drawer, free-standing cabinets (2,688 drawers total). In 1996 a compactor system was installed to accommodate more than triple that drawer capacity (8,748 drawers total); however, the old cabinets continued to be utilized while funding was sought to replace them. This NSF grant will soon allow us to finally realize the full benefit of the compactors by filling them with the cabinets and drawers for which they were originally designed. In the "New Museum" we will add two new banks of cabinets and drawers (1,848 new drawers) to match the existing ones. This room presently houses Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Odonata and the remainder of the Lepidoptera.
You can read the full details of our project as presented to the NSF review panel: Project Description, References, and Supporting Documentation.
Simultaneously, and complementary to the NSF project, the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera Research will be built on the University of Florida campus adjacent to the Museum of Entomology (FSCA)/Doyle Connor Building. When completed, this $8.4 million facility will comprise one of the world's largest Lepidoptera collections and research institutions. See the announcement below for details.
On-Line.
Back issues of the journal Insecta Mundi are being scanned beginning with Vol. 1, #1 and will be provided in DjVu
format. Please see the
On-Line
page for issues currently available.
The
McGuire Center for Lepidoptera Research is Announced.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of Dr. Thomas C. Emmel of the University of Florida and others, an extremely generous contribution of $4.2 million from long time FSCA research associate Dr. Bill McGuire, together with another $4.2 million provided by a matching grant from the State of Florida, and the co-operation of the Allyn Museum of Entomology (AME)/Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH), the University of Florida, and the Florida State Collection of Arthropods (FSCA)/Florida Department of Agriculture, Division of Plant Industry, the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera Research is being constructed on the University of Florida campus next door to the Museum of Entomology (FSCA). The McGuire Center for Lepidoptera Research will house the Lepidoptera collections of the Allyn Museum and the FSCA. This project to unify the major Lepidoptera collections in Florida has been planned for many years and was the driving force behind the creation of the Center for Arthropod Systematics. Now that sufficient funding is available, what has been only a concept is on a fast track to becoming a reality. As part of this unification, the FSCA curator of Lepidoptera, Dr. John B. Heppner, will be moving next door to join Drs. Lee Miller and Jacqueline Y. Miller, Curator and Associate Curator of the Allyn Museum respectively, Dr. Thomas C. Emmel, and the other Lepidoptera curators and researchers of the McGuire Center.
The completion of the first phase of construction and official opening of the McGuire Center is planned for early 2003. Projected holdings of Lepidoptera at that time, an estimated 3.5 million specimens including pending donations and acquisitions but not including the immatures collection of the FSCA, will place the McGuire Center among the world's largest Lepidoptera collections.
Links providing further details:
|
Florida Entomological Society announcement by Dr. Thomas C. Emmel |
|
|