APRIL, 2004: Periodical Cicadas Take Over the News, if not the world. This is the year that Brood X of the 17-year Cicada emerges across NE North America. Aside from the sensationalized and heavily reported upon emergence-to be, this is a unique phenomenon. In Michigan, adult Magicicada septendecim (17-year cicada) will begin emerging in mid- to late May, depending upon weather conditions. However, Michigan populations of the periodical cicada are spotty, and not as dramatic as in Ohio and neighboring states. Your best bet to hear this species around Ann Arbor would be to travel to Dixboro Road near Matthaei Botanical Gardens. For more information, go to our Periodical Cicada pages. (Local Coverage in the News).

Update - May 25 -- the local population started emerging May 21, so start listening!

JULY, 2003

W.H. Wagner, Jr. collection of Lepidoptera comes to the UMMZ

MARCH, 2003

NEW INSECT BIOLOGY CLASS - EEB 442 - more information

JANUARY, 2003

Dr. Lacey Knowles has just arrived as a new curator!

Our server has changed from Webstar 4.1 to Apache, running on OS X. There is a noticeable speed improvement.

November 2002

Renovations: A new "live room" is being constructed on the ground floor, adjacent to the Acari range. This room will house growth chambers and provide a good working space for Berlese funnel extractions and other work involving live insects. Lab space is being constructed for our new curator, Lacey Knowles, and hopefully be ready for her when she starts here in January, 2003.

New Equipment: Barry OConnor had an AutoMontage unit installed in his lab. This device allows us to take a series of images of specimens under the microscope at varying heights. It then aligns and combines the images, resulting in an image with astonishing depth of field.

October, 2002

The UMMZ acquired a Nikon D100 digital SLR, which will be put to use photographing the types in our collection. The Bird Division is starting out with it, and we'll start working with our types during this winter.

Summer, 2002 Emerald Ash Borer - A new pest in Ann Arbor!

April 11-23, 2002 - Rosser Garrison and Natalia von Ellenrieder have been working 12-hour days in the Odonata Collection. They have finished the Odonata type catalog (over 350 species) and are finding lots of new taxa in our collection. We look forward to seeing some new species described from their "collecting." They have also been sorting a lot of our unidentified Neotropical material. Rosser rates our Odonata Collection as "the best" in the Western Hemisphere.

Rosser Garrison

Natalia Von Ellenrieder