Tiger Beetles: The Often Colorful "Butterfies" of the Beetle World By Bob Nelson

Tiger Beetles: The Often Colorful "Butterfies" of the Beetle World webinar by Bob Nelson which was hosted on Thursday, October 14, 2021.

Important Update: PDF of slides that include the species Cicindela repanda

Tiger beetles have that name for a reason - they're fierce predators on almost anything they can subdue. Most species are rarely seen, because as visual hunters they are acutely aware of anything moving in their surroundings and will quickly fly when approached. Maine has some 14 species in this group, including one officially listed as "endangered" and two more listed as "species of special concern."

Bob Nelson earned his B.A. and M.S. degrees in geology, and his Ph.D. in an individually structured program in "Multidisciplinary Quaternary Paleoecology." In this latter, he developed skills in reconstructing past environments from the pollen, seeds, and insect remains found in sediments. He began collecting Coleoptera in 1979, to provide a reference collection to assist in identifying the disarticulated fragments in the sediments. He discovered over a dozen species new to science while collecting in California, Washington State, and Alaska, two of which (Oxypoda nelsoni Lohse and Micropeplus nelsoni Campbell) are now named for him.

After ten years with the U.S. Geological Survey working in northern Alaska, he joined the faculty at Colby College where he taught geology until retiring in 2018. A coauthor on Richard Dearborn's synthesis paper on the Carabidae of Maine, his principal interest is in expanding the knowledge of Maine's ground beetles, and particularly of those taxa found in wetland environments. He was one of the founding members of the M.E.S. in 1997 and was the first VP. He also wrote the Constitution and by-laws, founded the initial web page in 2003 (which ran until Hillary took it over this year), and has been Editor of the newsletter since the beginning of 2007.