One of the main goals of my sabbatical was to write, write, write.  I needed to finish up a number of papers that had been on the back burner for way too long.  I also wanted to start a couple larger projects.  While I didn't get everything done that I wanted to, I was able to make strong progress on all my writing projects.  I also managed to add another paper, coauthored with my host, Noah Whiteman, and his lab.  This turned out to be a nice project that allowed us to summarize some of the microbial work that we have both been doing in our labs.  This paper has just come out online in Frontiers in Microbiology's special Symbioses issue.  Here's a link to the paper.

Kari's latest paper on Hawaiian Diptera is out!  This one is a phylogeny of the endemic Hawaiian Campsicnemus (Diptera: Dolichopodidae), with some very interesting analyses on the biogeography and ecological adaptations in the group.  Our coauthors were Neal Evenhuis at the Bishop Museum and Pavla Bartosova-Sojkova, a former visiting scholar in the lab.  We have one more paper on Hawaiian dolis in the works and are excited to publish on this very cool radiation of about 350 endemic Hawaiian species.

I posted earlier this year about wanting to publish a series of small papers on the distribution and identification of several lineages of Hawaiian flies.  I also wanted to use the series to publish some species names from the smaller groups or the clades where a full revision isn't tractable.  The first paper was on the Asteiidae and it came out in February.  The second in the series was on the genus Scatella (Ephydridae) and was published in August.  My coauthors Neal Evenhuis and Keith Arakaki are both researchers at the BP Bishop Museum.  We owe a huge thanks to Torsten Dikow for helping with the database of the Smithsonian Material.  You can read the paper here.

My next paper will be on the endemic Hawaiian Canacidae and will include the description of a new species in the genus Procanace.

The lab has been collecting Hawaiian Diptera for over 15 years now and we have a large amount of unpublished data on species distributions, identification resources and new species of various fly groups.  I decided to try a new journal as an outlet for these types of data.  The Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ) is a peer-reviewed journal published by Pensoft.  It offers a unique, online paper authoring and revision format that works very well with catalogs, species descriptions and identification keys.  All distribution data is input in Darwin Core format and made available for download as CSV files.  It is also ported to GBIF.  BDJ is also a rapid outlet so papers can appear within a few weeks of initial submission.

My plan is to publish a series of papers on Hawaiiain Diptera.  The first, a number of new island records for the endemic Hawaiian Asteia, was just published.  Look for future papers on Limoniidae, Canacidae, Ephydridae and (of course) Drosophilidae.  

We have two pieces of good news on the Scaptomyza front this week.  First, Rick's phylogeny paper was accepted by Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.  It should be out sometime in 2013 but I'll post a link here when it becomes available online.

The second item is that our NSF preproposal was accepted for a full proposal.  We'll be working on this over the course of the summer.  Congratulations to Rick and Noah!!

The third chapter of Gordon's dissertation has been accepted at the Journal of Biogeography.  This paper examines the interplay between historical biogeography and ecological opportunity in the native Hawaiian Nesophrosyne radiation.

Teri Markow and I have a chapter comparing patterns of diversification in Hawaiian Drosophila and the cactophilic repleta species group.

Postdoc Kari Goodman's paper on Nesosydne divergence is out in Evolution.  Here's the link.  Congratulations!!  And happy National Postdoctoral Appreciation Week!

Check out Jessica's paper reviewing a new book on Phylogenetic Networks in the journal Taxon.  Congratulations!

Congratulations to Gordon for having another chapter of his dissertation published.  His paper on how host plants have shaped the diversity of native Hawaiian Nesophrosyne leafhoppers will appear in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution soon!