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> This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. --Boundary_(ID_f104xQtFDQ4fMMwBw5/RJQ) Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Many of you undoubtedly noticed this article in the Saturday Chronicle Herald, Aug. 12/06. But at the end of the page where the article ended, th= e Herald editors chose to just end the article at that point and not print th= e rest of it nor how to find it. Below I have typed in a dashed line where the Herald article ended, so you can see what I mean. David L. Wagner's thick new field guide, "Caterpillars of Eastern North America", is chock full of beautiful photographs, sometimes more than one per species, as well as lots of information on the detailed and complex natural history of the various species. Cheers from Jim in Wolfville, 542-9204. ---------------------- Subject: N. Y. Times article on David L. Wagner (caterpillars), Aug. 8/06 UConn In the News... As published in the New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/> , August 8, 2006=20 In The Field: UConn's David L. Wagner Quick, Before It Molts By ANDY NEWMAN=20 EAST HAMPTON, Conn. =97 David L. Wagner was beating the bushes in a state par= k here the other day, hoping to flush out new kinds of caterpillars, when a colleague walked over and presented for inspection a plump, milky-green creature he had just found crawling on a leaf. The caterpillar was not particularly rare, but Dr. Wagner set down his stick to greet an old friend= . =93Abbot=92s sphinx!=94 he called out. =93One of our only talking insects.=94 He trained his ever-present field magnifier on the bug=92s back, which sprouted a cadmium-yellow horn-shaped protuberance. After the next molt, Dr= . Wagner said, =93the horn turns into an eyelike button =97 it actually looks lik= e your eye =97 and if you touch the eye the caterpillar reels around and squeak= s like a mouse. Scares the bejesus out of you, is what it does.=94 Dr. Wagner went back to whacking at grass stalks with renewed vigor. =93You don=92t need to go to the Amazon,=94 he said. =93You don=92t need to go to New Guinea. You go out your back door with a hand lens and you=92ll find some pretty amazing things that a lot of people have overlooked.=94 More than 600 of those things populate the pages of =93Caterpillars of Easter= n North America=94 (Princeton University Press, 2005), a lusciously photographe= d book generally regarded as the most comprehensive field guide ever to caterpillars, as opposed to their better-documented adult forms =97 moths and butterflies.=20 In the book, the fruit of a decade=92s research, Dr. Wagner, an associate professor of ecology at the University of Connecticut, argues passionately that creeping things can be every bit as mesmerizing and transporting as those that flit and dart in the air. Take, for instance, the camouflaged looper, an inchworm that cloaks itself in shredded bits of the flower it is feeding on. =93A Mardi Gras caterpillar that is out of costume only after a molt,=94 Dr. Wagner writes. Or the orange dog, scion of the handsome but rather mundane-looking giant swallowtail butterfly. The orange dog looks like a squirt of fresh bird droppings with two long retractable magenta fangs; as the book notes approvingly, =93a caterpillar with excellent options in both bird-dropping and snake-mimicry.= =94 The names alone =97 abrupt brother, horrid zale, curved-lined angle, grapelea= f skeletonizer, monkey slug =97 make the book absorbing reading. Though Dr. Wagner has observed more than 1,000 species in his backyard in Storrs, in northeastern Connecticut, he found much to interest him here at Hurd State Park, less than 30 miles south. At the edge of a grassland by the Connecticut River, he examined his beatin= g sheet, a white nylon kite stretched across a wood frame, and picked up a beige, wormy-looking caterpillar with dark brown streaks running along its back. =93I don=92t think I=92ve seen that one before,=94 he said. In just the past year, Dr. Wagner has discovered and described a half-dozen species that had either never been observed in their caterpillar state or were new to science altogether =97 a fact that says much about the primitive state of caterpillar studies. =93Caterpillars are the last unknown group of big things on the terrestrial world,=94 said Daniel H. Janzen, an ecologist at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied the caterpillars of one corner of Costa Rica for 25 years.=20 =93You step off a plane in some place like Venezuela and walk out into the forest, pick up a fruit or a skull or a butterfly or a bird =97 anything big enough to hold in your hand =97 it=92s got a name, and there is someone who can tell you what it is,=94 he said. =93That=92s not true for caterpillars, the world around.=94=20 There are several reasons. Few reference-quality collections of specimens exist, because, unlike birds and beetles and butterflies, dead caterpillars do not keep well. Scientists have tried pickling them in alcohol, or hollowing them out and blowing them up like little balloons, but both techniques distort them badly. And until recent advances in DNA science, the only way to identify a caterpillar positively was to rear it to adulthood, which requires careful husbandry. (There are well-known moths whose caterpillars have never been seen by science.) Most caterpillars shed their skins five or six times as they grow, and each stage, or instar, can have radically different markings and patterns from the previous one. =93In order to do this well, you sort of had to know the entire universe,=94 said Dr. Wagner, who said that 5 percent to 10 percent of the caterpillars in his book had never before been studied through their entire life cycles. The 700 species in the book are only a small fraction of the 5,000 east of the Mississippi.=20 Dr. Wagner, a tall 49-year-old Californian whose trim mustache and lantern jaw lend him an air of the safari, started out as a botanist but was drawn to insects and then caterpillars by luck and circumstance. In 1992, for research on how a common bio-organic pesticide used against gypsy moth caterpillars affected other species, he and his team collected 12,000 caterpillars in a Virginia forest and reared them to adulthood. The data yielded a guide to 50 common forest caterpillars. The federal Forest Service printed 5,000 copies, which were snapped up in a few months. =93At that point we knew we had something special, and that there was this enormous void,=94 Dr. Wagner said. His current book, =93Caterpillars of Eastern North America,=94 has gone through three printings and has sold more than 10,000 copies.=20 Caterpillars are in some ways ideal subjects for the amateur naturalist. They do not fly or run away when someone tries to look at them, they can be found just about anywhere, especially in late spring and late summer, if yo= u take the time, and even the most pedestrian-looking species reveal a visual riot of stripes and spines and spots and bumps with the aid of a 10-power magnifying hand lens. The all-too-common and destructive Eastern tent caterpillar is, on close inspection, a strange and striking insect, =93lavishly variegated in steel blue, black, orange and white,=94 Dr. Wagner writes.=20 And unlike butterflies, caterpillars seem well suited to life in captivity. =93When you capture a butterfly,=94 he said, =93you=92re interrupting the cycle of nature. When you capture a caterpillar, you=92re probably saving its life, assuming you know what you=92re doing.=94 Fewer than 1 percent of caterpillar eggs survive to adulthood in the wild. Dr. Wagner said caterpillars also deserved appreciation for their indirect benefits to the world. They are a dietary mainstay of beloved songbirds, an= d it is to defend themselves against caterpillars that plants have developed many of mankind=92s favorite chemical compounds, including nicotine, caffeine and tannins.=20 =93When somebody tips back a glass of wine, they should be thanking caterpillars,=94 Dr. Wagner said. =93You should be raising a toast.=94 --------------------------------[Herald article ended here] -------------------------------- Dr. Wagner serves on the rare species advisory panel of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, where his expertise gives him a strong voice in land-use decisions. =93I can set a trap anywhere in the state and, because I know the insects=92 biologies, can tell you the next morning if that piece of land should be preserved, or else say =91No, build a golf course here; we=92ve got bigger fish to fry somewhere else,=92 =94 he said. New specimens come to Dr. Wagner in all sorts of ways. After the foray in Hurd State Park, he met a state biologist in a restaurant parking lot near Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. The man handed off a vial containing a lime green, trilobite-like caterpillar with yellow chevrons on its back.=20 =93I=92ve never seen one of these alive before,=94 Dr. Wagner said. =93I=92ll get a great photo of him.=94 After dinner, Dr. Wagner returned to the park with a class of Wesleyan students for a night hunt. They strung up lights and a sheet in a clearing. Within minutes, the sheet was covered with moths =97 about 50 species, Dr. Wagner guessed. He pointed out a small dark-brown mothlike insect with a notched wing.=20 =93This is really cool!=94 he said, explaining that its larvae live in termite nests and spray a paralyzing gas from their rears to immobilize the termite= s before eating them. The students fanned out across the field with flashlights, looking for night-feeding caterpillars in the tall grass. One of them brought back a vial containing a chunky brown inchworm with a sleek face mask and four black dots on its back. Dr. Wagner trained his lens on it. =93I=92m not sure what that is,=94 he said. =93I=92m interested in this one. If I could keep it, that would be great.=94 He slipped the vial into his pocket --Boundary_(ID_f104xQtFDQ4fMMwBw5/RJQ) Content-type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>N. Y. Times article on David L. Wagner (caterpillars), Aug. 8/06</TI= TLE> </HEAD> <BODY> Many of you undoubtedly noticed this article in the Saturday Chronicle Hera= ld, Aug. 12/06. But at the end of the page where the article ended, th= e Herald editors chose to just end the article at that point and not print t= he rest of it nor how to find it. Below I have typed in a dashed line = where the Herald article ended, so you can see what I mean.<BR> <BR> David L. Wagner's thick new field guide, "Caterpillars of Eastern Nort= h America", is chock full of beautiful photographs, sometimes more than= one per species, as well as lots of information on the detailed and complex= natural history of the various species.<BR> <BR> Cheers from Jim in Wolfville, 542-9204. <BR> ----------------------<BR> <B>Subject: </B>N. Y. Times article on David L. Wagner (caterpillars), Aug.= 8/06<BR> <BR> <FONT FACE=3D"Arial"><H1>UConn In the News...<BR> </H1><FONT SIZE=3D"2"><I>As published in the New York Times <http://= www.nytimes.com/> , August 8, 2006</I> <BR> <BR> In The Field: UConn's David L. Wagner<BR> <I>Quick, Before It Molts<BR> </I>By ANDY NEWMAN <BR> <BR> EAST HAMPTON, Conn. =97 <B>David L. Wagner</B> was beating the bushes in a st= ate park here the other day, hoping to flush out new kinds of caterpillars, = when a colleague walked over and presented for inspection a plump, milky-gre= en creature he had just found crawling on a leaf. The caterpillar was not pa= rticularly rare, but Dr. Wagner set down his stick to greet an old friend. <= BR> <BR> =93Abbot=92s sphinx!=94 he called out. =93One of our only talking insects.=94 <BR> <BR> He trained his ever-present field magnifier on the bug=92s back, which sprout= ed a cadmium-yellow horn-shaped protuberance. After the next molt, Dr. Wagne= r said, =93the horn turns into an eyelike button =97 it actually looks like your= eye =97 and if you touch the eye the caterpillar reels around and squeaks lik= e a mouse. Scares the bejesus out of you, is what it does.=94 <BR> <BR> Dr. Wagner went back to whacking at grass stalks with renewed vigor. =93You d= on=92t need to go to the Amazon,=94 he said. =93You don=92t need to go to New Guinea= . You go out your back door with a hand lens and you=92ll find some pretty ama= zing things that a lot of people have overlooked.=94 <BR> <BR> More than 600 of those things populate the pages of =93Caterpillars of Easter= n North America=94 (Princeton University Press, 2005), a lusciously photograph= ed book generally regarded as the most comprehensive field guide ever to cat= erpillars, as opposed to their better-documented adult forms =97 moths and but= terflies. <BR> <BR> In the book, the fruit of a decade=92s research, Dr. Wagner, <B>an associate = professor of ecology at the University of Connecticut</B>, argues passionate= ly that creeping things can be every bit as mesmerizing and transporting as = those that flit and dart in the air. <BR> <BR> Take, for instance, the camouflaged looper, an inchworm that cloaks itself = in shredded bits of the flower it is feeding on. =93A Mardi Gras caterpillar t= hat is out of costume only after a molt,=94 Dr. Wagner writes. Or the orange d= og, scion of the handsome but rather mundane-looking giant swallowtail butte= rfly. The orange dog looks like a squirt of fresh bird droppings with two lo= ng retractable magenta fangs; as the book notes approvingly, =93a caterpillar = with excellent options in both bird-dropping and snake-mimicry.=94 <BR> <BR> The names alone =97 abrupt brother, horrid zale, curved-lined angle, grapelea= f skeletonizer, monkey slug =97 make the book absorbing reading. <BR> <BR> Though Dr. Wagner has observed more than 1,000 species in his backyard in S= torrs, in northeastern Connecticut, he found much to interest him here at Hu= rd State Park, less than 30 miles south. <BR> <BR> At the edge of a grassland by the Connecticut River, he examined his beatin= g sheet, a white nylon kite stretched across a wood frame, and picked up a b= eige, wormy-looking caterpillar with dark brown streaks running along its ba= ck. =93I don=92t think I=92ve seen that one before,=94 he said. <BR> <BR> In just the past year, Dr. Wagner has discovered and described a half-dozen= species that had either never been observed in their caterpillar state or w= ere new to science altogether =97 a fact that says much about the primitive st= ate of caterpillar studies. <BR> <BR> =93Caterpillars are the last unknown group of big things on the terrestrial w= orld,=94 said Daniel H. Janzen, an ecologist at the University of Pennsylvania= who has studied the caterpillars of one corner of Costa Rica for 25 years. = <BR> <BR> =93You step off a plane in some place like Venezuela and walk out into the fo= rest, pick up a fruit or a skull or a butterfly or a bird =97 anything big eno= ugh to hold in your hand =97 it=92s got a name, and there is someone who can tel= l you what it is,=94 he said. =93That=92s not true for caterpillars, the world aro= und.=94 <BR> <BR> There are several reasons. Few reference-quality collections of specimens e= xist, because, unlike birds and beetles and butterflies, dead caterpillars d= o not keep well. Scientists have tried pickling them in alcohol, or hollowin= g them out and blowing them up like little balloons, but both techniques dis= tort them badly. <BR> <BR> And until recent advances in DNA science, the only way to identify a caterp= illar positively was to rear it to adulthood, which requires careful husband= ry. (There are well-known moths whose caterpillars have never been seen by s= cience.) Most caterpillars shed their skins five or six times as they grow, = and each stage, or instar, can have radically different markings and pattern= s from the previous one. <BR> <BR> =93In order to do this well, you sort of had to know the entire universe,=94 sa= id Dr. Wagner, who said that 5 percent to 10 percent of the caterpillars in = his book had never before been studied through their entire life cycles. The= 700 species in the book are only a small fraction of the 5,000 east of the = Mississippi. <BR> <BR> Dr. Wagner, a tall 49-year-old Californian whose trim mustache and lantern = jaw lend him an air of the safari, started out as a botanist but was drawn t= o insects and then caterpillars by luck and circumstance. <BR> <BR> In 1992, for research on how a common bio-organic pesticide used against gy= psy moth caterpillars affected other species, he and his team collected 12,0= 00 caterpillars in a Virginia forest and reared them to adulthood. The data = yielded a guide to 50 common forest caterpillars. The federal Forest Service= printed 5,000 copies, which were snapped up in a few months. <BR> <BR> =93At that point we knew we had something special, and that there was this en= ormous void,=94 Dr. Wagner said. His current book, =93Caterpillars of Eastern No= rth America,=94 has gone through three printings and has sold more than 10,000= copies. <BR> <BR> Caterpillars are in some ways ideal subjects for the amateur naturalist. Th= ey do not fly or run away when someone tries to look at them, they can be fo= und just about anywhere, especially in late spring and late summer, if you t= ake the time, and even the most pedestrian-looking species reveal a visual r= iot of stripes and spines and spots and bumps with the aid of a 10-power mag= nifying hand lens. The all-too-common and destructive Eastern tent caterpill= ar is, on close inspection, a strange and striking insect, =93lavishly variega= ted in steel blue, black, orange and white,=94 Dr. Wagner writes. <BR> <BR> And unlike butterflies, caterpillars seem well suited to life in captivity.= =93When you capture a butterfly,=94 he said, =93you=92re interrupting the cycle of = nature. When you capture a caterpillar, you=92re probably saving its life, ass= uming you know what you=92re doing.=94 Fewer than 1 percent of caterpillar eggs = survive to adulthood in the wild. <BR> <BR> Dr. Wagner said caterpillars also deserved appreciation for their indirect = benefits to the world. They are a dietary mainstay of beloved songbirds, and= it is to defend themselves against caterpillars that plants have developed = many of mankind=92s favorite chemical compounds, including nicotine, caffeine = and tannins. <BR> <BR> =93When somebody tips back a glass of wine, they should be thanking caterpill= ars,=94 Dr. Wagner said. =93You should be raising a toast.=94 <BR> --------------------------------[Herald article ended here]<BR> --------------------------------<BR> Dr. Wagner serves on the rare species advisory panel of the Connecticut Dep= artment of Environmental Protection, where his expertise gives him a strong = voice in land-use decisions. <BR> <BR> =93I can set a trap anywhere in the state and, because I know the insects=92 bi= ologies, can tell you the next morning if that piece of land should be prese= rved, or else say =91No, build a golf course here; we=92ve got bigger fish to fr= y somewhere else,=92 =94 he said. <BR> <BR> New specimens come to Dr. Wagner in all sorts of ways. After the foray in H= urd State Park, he met a state biologist in a restaurant parking lot near We= sleyan University in Middletown, Conn. The man handed off a vial containing = a lime green, trilobite-like caterpillar with yellow chevrons on its back. <= BR> <BR> =93I=92ve never seen one of these alive before,=94 Dr. Wagner said. =93I=92ll get a g= reat photo of him.=94 <BR> <BR> After dinner, Dr. Wagner returned to the park with a class of Wesleyan stud= ents for a night hunt. They strung up lights and a sheet in a clearing. <BR> <BR> Within minutes, the sheet was covered with moths =97 about 50 species, Dr. Wa= gner guessed. He pointed out a small dark-brown mothlike insect with a notch= ed wing. <BR> <BR> =93This is really cool!=94 he said, explaining that its larvae live in termite = nests and spray a paralyzing gas from their rears to immobilize the termites= before eating them. <BR> <BR> The students fanned out across the field with flashlights, looking for nigh= t-feeding caterpillars in the tall grass. One of them brought back a vial co= ntaining a chunky brown inchworm with a sleek face mask and four black dots = on its back. <BR> <BR> Dr. Wagner trained his lens on it. =93I=92m not sure what that is,=94 he said. =93I= =92m interested in this one. If I could keep it, that would be great.=94 <BR> <BR> He slipped the vial into his pocket<BR> </FONT></FONT><BR> </BODY> </HTML> --Boundary_(ID_f104xQtFDQ4fMMwBw5/RJQ)--
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