Invasive Species Symposium of the IXth European Congress of Entomology

In June PhD Candidate Bobbie Hitchcock attended a meeting in Melbourne with the project team for CRC40136: Insect Eradication Phase two project team, hosted by Dave Williams and held at the Attwood offices of the Department of Primary Industries, Victoria. Bobbie presented a draft of the talk she was to give later in the month at the Invasive Species Symposium of the IXth European Congress of Entomology in Budapest, Hungary. Feedback provide by members of the group was very helpful in finalising her presentation for the Invasive Species Symposium of the IXth European Congress of Entomology.

Above: CRC40136 project team members in Melbourne
From left: Greg Baker (PIRSA-SARDI, Adelaide), Max Suckling (Plant & Food Research, Lincoln, New Zealand), Latif Salehi (PIRSA-SARDI, Adelaide), Lloyd Stringer (Plant & Food Research, Lincoln, New Zealand), Bobbie Hitchcock (ANIC, Canberra), Bill Woods (DAFWA, Perth), Alven Soopaya (DAFWA, Perth), Dave Williams (DPI-VIC, Tatura). Photograph supplied by Bill Woods.

In late July, Bobbie headed off to London to spend time in the insect collection at the Natural History Division of the British Museum, which has recently been relocated to the new Darwin Centre in South Kensington. Her hosts in the Lepidoptera section of the entomology department were Kevin Tuck and Alessandro Giusti.

During her visit, Bobbie was able to inspect Types of over 20 Epiphyas species and other specimens that had been collected in Australia, Hawaii and on Lord Howe Island in the Pacific Ocean. She completed an inventory of specimens significant for the revision and collected morphological data from three rarely collected species: E. epichorda, E. iodes and E. lycodes.

The information Bobbie obtained from the collection at the British Museum will assist me to build a species identification key for the entire genus and contribute to the interpretation of DNA-based data for a subset of the genus which includes the Epiphyas pest species.

Bobbie then flew to Budapest to present her work at the Invasive Species Symposium of the IXth European Congress of Entomology where she met her supervisor Marianne Horak and fellow CRCNPB researcher, Mark Schütze who is working on CRC20115: Resolving the Bactrocera dorsalis species complex.

Left: IXth. ECE attendees enjoying night views of Budapest during a boat cruise on the Danube.
From left: Adriana Najar-Rodriguez (ETH Zürich, Switzerland), Enric Frago (Universitat de Valencia, Spain) and Mark Schütze (CRCNPB/QUT, Vienna). Photograph supplied by Mark Schütze
Right: (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria). Photograph supplied by Teodora Toshova

There were over 300 oral presentations and more than 300 posters presented at the congress. Bobbies oral presentation focused on providing agencies involved in E. postvittana identification with points of access within Australia for reliable information on the pest Epiphyas species and the many contributors to this revision, both in Australia and overseas, were acknowledged. She was able to include an overview of the morphological and DNA-based methods involved in the revision and a summary of the outcomes so far.

Most of the 532 registered participants attended a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Hungarian Entomological Society at the Hungarian Natural History Museum and photographs taken during this event can be viewed at www.conferences.hu/gallery/ECE2010