M. Alex Smith

University of Guelph | UOGuelph · Department of Integrative Biology

Introduction: Species of Mesochorus are found worldwide and members of this genus are primarily hyperparasitoids of Ichneumonoidea and Tachinidae. Objectives: To describe species of Costa Rican Mesochorus reared from caterpillars and to a lesser extent Malaise-trapped. Methods: The species are diagnosed by COI mtDNA barcodes, morphological inspecti...

The parasitoid wasp genus Alphomelon Mason, 1981 is revised, based on a combination of basic morphology (dichotomous key and brief diagnostic descriptions), DNA barcoding, biology (host data and wasp cocoons), and distribution data. A total of 49 species is considered; the genus is almost entirely Neotropical (48 species recorded from that region),...

This revision is part of a continuing series of taxonomic work aimed at the description of new taxa and the redescription of known taxa of the Tachinidae of Area de Conservación Guanacaste in northwestern Costa Rica. Here we describe 33 new species in the genus Belvosia Robineau-Desvoidy, 1830 (Diptera: Tachinidae). All species described here were...

Biological diversity changes along montane slopes. Such changes are particularly stark in the neotropics due to the relative stability of abiotic variables (like temperature and precipitation) across elevation. While these relationships have been understood since the late 1960s, elucidating patterns of neotropical diversity along elevation is slowe...

Global gradients in species biodiversity are expected to reflect tighter packing of species closer to the equator. Yet, empirical validation of these patterns has so far focused on less diverse taxa, with comparable assessments of mega-diverse groups historically constrained by the taxonomic impediment. Here we assess the temporal and spatial turno...

We describe three new species of the previously monotypic genus Creagrura Townes from Central and South America: C. alejandromasisi sp. n. and C. rogerblancoi sp. n. from Costa Rica and C. allpahuaya sp. n. from Peru, all of which emphasise the unknown parasitoid insect diversity yet to be revealed in the tropics. Host relationships of the two Cost...

Ants often interact with other invertebrates as predators or mutualists. Epiphytic bromeliads provide nesting sites for ants, and could increase ant abundances in the tree canopy. We surveyed ants in the foliage of orange trees that either hosted bromeliads or did not. To determine if observed associations between bromeliads and tree ants were caus...

This is a response to a preprint version of “A re-analysis of the data in Sharkey et al.’s (2021) minimalist revision reveals that BINs do not deserve names, but BOLD Systems needs a stronger commitment to open science”, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.28.441626v2. Meier et al. strongly criticized Sharkey et al.’s publication in whi...

The soil fauna of the tropics remains one of the least known components of the biosphere. Long-term monitoring of this fauna is hampered by the lack of taxonomic expertise and funding. These obstacles may potentially be lifted with DNA metabarcoding. To validate this approach, we studied the ants, springtails and termites of 100 paired soil samples...

Eastern spruce budworm, Choristoneura fumiferana Clemens (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), is a major pest of eastern North American forests. Outbreaks of spruce budworm occur every 30–40 years, causing high tree mortality. Researchers have established that higher proportions of hardwood trees within stands (higher hardwood content) may reduce the defoli...

?Abstract Twenty-nine species are treated, most of which have host caterpillar and food plant records, and all but one are new to science. The first host record for the agathidine genus Amputoearinus is given. Gnathopleurajosequesadai Sharkey, sp. nov. is reported as a hyperparasitoid of fly larvae, the first such record for the genus. The followin...

Meaningful student‐instructor interactions during an undergraduate degree course can have important effects on student learning. Despite this, the format by which those interactions are made possible can vary greatly. We investigated the preferred modality of contact and students’ reasons for contact across several platforms in a first‐year biology...

The COVID-19 pandemic posed, and continues to pose, many challenges to teaching and learning, most notably the need to pivot from traditional in-person course instruction and experiences to entirely virtual course delivery while maintaining course rigor and quality. Our guiding principle for course modification was the critical need for an equitabl...

We revise the genus Metaplagia Coquillett, 1895 and describe five new species from Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) in northwestern Costa Rica. All new species were reared from an ongoing inventory of wild-caught caterpillars spanning a variety of species within the family Sphingidae (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae). Our study provides a concise desc...

A molecular phylogeny of the subfamily Rogadinae is presented for 469 species in 52 genera representing all tribes and subtribes. The data comprise cytochrome c oxidase I sequences (DNA barcodes), together with a broad representation of 28S rDNA D2-D3 expansion region, EF1-α gene and 16S rDNA fragments. To test monophyly, most genera were represent...

The world is astoundingly variable, and organisms – from individuals to whole communities – must respond to variability to survive. One example of nature’s variability is the fluctuations in populations of spruce budworm, Choristoneura fumiferana Clemens (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), which cycle every 35 years. In this study, we examined how a parasi...

Background Rickettsia are intracellular bacteria best known as the causative agents of human and animal diseases. Although these medically important Rickettsia are often transmitted via haematophagous arthropods, other Rickettsia, such as those in the Torix group, appear to reside exclusively in invertebrates and protists with no secondary vertebra...

Passive transport has likely contributed to the post-glacial dispersal of species in temperate regions. However, identifying such processes from patterns can be obscured by confounding environmental conditions. We studied the distribution of ground beetles in Ontario’s Far North, a vast (450,000 km²) and largely intact region, to identify mechanism...

Three new genera are described: Michener (Proteropinae), Bioalfa (Rogadinae), and Hermosomastax (Rogadinae). Keys are given for the New World genera of the following braconid subfamilies: Agathidinae, Braconinae, Cheloninae, Homolobinae, Hormiinae, Ichneutinae, Macrocentrinae, Orgilinae, Proteropinae, Rhysipolinae, and Rogadinae. In these subfamili...

Environmental stress from abiotic conditions imposes physiological limits on individuals within communities, and these stressful conditions can act as a filter on the species present in any given environment. Such abiotic stressors can reduce a community's diversity and make its composition more phylogenetically clustered. Using a decade of staphyl...

A major pest of eastern North American forests is spruce budworm, Choristoneura fumiferana Clemens (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), which outbreaks every 30–40 years and causes large scale tree mortality. Researchers have established that hardwood content reduces the defoliation and mortality of balsam fir and spruces during spruce budworm outbreaks. On...

Climate change in the Neotropics is causing upslope range shifts. We used arrays of ant species collected in a cloud forest at 1,500 m in Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG), northwestern Costa Rica, collected in two time periods (1998–2000 and 2008–2011) to measure changes in species richness and diversity over a decade. Using metrics of communi...

Throughout the Neotropics, temperature and precipitation change with elevation and these changes affect the assemblage of species at any particular elevation. We documented the diversity of litter‐inhabiting spiders, (Arachnida: Araneae) along a Costa Rican elevational gradient as it relates to covarying abiotic factors such as temperature and prec...

Based on samples from 5 discrete habitat types (Thuja occidentalis [Eastern White Cedar] stand, Eastern White Cedar fen, old field, Acadian Mixed Forest, peat bog) we report the first assessment of ant species richness for a specific locale in New Brunswick. We identified 30 ant species across 3 subfamilies and 9 genera as present in Rockwood Park,...

We report one year (2013-2014) of biomonitoring an insect community in a tropical old-growth rainforest, during construction of an industrial-level geothermal electricity project. This is the first-year reaction by the species-rich insect biodiversity; six subsequent years are being analyzed now. The site is on the margin of a UNESCO Natural World...

Annual monitoring of mortality agents in the course of a spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana (Clemens) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae)) population cycle is essential to understanding the factors governing the rise and collapse of outbreaks. To date, assessments of causes of budworm mortality have relied on laboratory rearing of field-collected larv...

We describe 25 new species in the genus Telothyria van der Wulp, 1890 from Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) in northwestern Costa Rica. All species herein described were reared from an ongoing inventory of wild-caught caterpillars spanning two families (Lepidoptera: Crambidae, and Tortricidae). Our study provides a concise description of each...

Individual species can have profound effects on ecological communities, but, in hyperdiverse systems, it can be challenging to determine the underlying ecological mechanisms. Simplifying species’ responses by trophic level or functional group may be useful, but characterizing the trait structure of communities may be better related to niche process...

We describe one new genus and its one new species from Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) in northwestern Costa Rica. Our study provides a concise description of this new species using morphology, life history, molecular data and photographic documentation.

In this study, pinned insect specimens derived from Malaise traps in Costa Rica were identified using a collaborative process, resulting in a significant addition to our understanding of the range of a rare Neotropical ant genus. The specimens were imaged and the COI barcode region of mitochondrial DNA was sequenced. The images and sequence data we...

The descriptive taxonomic study reported here is focused on Glyptapanteles , a species-rich genus of hymenopteran parasitoid wasps. The species were found within the framework of two independent long-term Neotropical caterpillar rearing projects: northwestern Costa Rica (Área de Conservación Guanacaste, ACG) and eastern Andes, Ecuador (centered on...

Here we elucidate and justify a DNA barcode approach to insect species description that can be applied to name tens of thousands of species of Ichneumonoidea and many other species-rich taxa. Each description consists of a lateral habitus image of the specimen, a COI barcode diagnosis, and the holotype specimen information required by the Internati...

Background: We describe 22 new species in the genus Hyphantrophaga Townsend, 1892 (Diptera: Tachinidae) from Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) in north-western Costa Rica. All species were reared from an ongoing inventory of wild-caught caterpillars spanning a variety of families (Lepidoptera: Bombycidae, Crambidae, Depressariidae, Doidae, Ere...

Botanical carnivory is an evolutionary marvel of the plant kingdom that has long fascinated general onlookers and naturalists alike. Darwin even dedicated serious study to these ‘most wonderful plants in the world’ (Darwin 1875; Ellison and Gotelli 2009). Carnivory in plants has evolved multiple times across the world, often in wet, open, and nutri...

Army ants are among the top arthropod predators and considered keystone species in tropical ecosystems. During daily mass raids with many thousand workers, army ants hunt live prey, likely exerting strong top‐down control on prey species. Many tropical sites exhibit a high army ant species diversity (>20 species), suggesting that sympatric species...

The world is astoundingly variable, and individuals to whole communities must respond to variability to survive. One potent example of nature's variability is the massive fluctuations in spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana Clemens) populations that occur over 35 years. We examined how the parasitoid community altered its parasitism of budworm...

Background The New World genus Trismegistomya Reinhard, 1967b (Diptera: Tachinidae) previously included only the type species Trismegistomyapumilis (Reinhard, 1967a) from Arizona, U.S.A. New information We describe a new species of Trismegistomya, Trismegistomyajimoharai Fleming & Wood sp. n., from Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) in northwes...

The first species of Dolichogenidea (Hymenoptera: Braconidae, Microgastrinae) with the second mediotergite broadly quadrate to rectangular are revised, and eight new species from Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG), Costa Rica are described, all authored by Fernandez-Triana & Boudreault: alejandromasisi, angelagonzalezae, carlosmanuelrodriguezi,...

We describe and illustrate Paphanuspaloisp. n. , first generic record for Brazil, and Minangapatriciamadrigalae , first generic record for Costa Rica. We present illustrated keys for the New World genera of Sigalphinae, and the New World species of Paphanus and Minanga . Minangapatriciamadrigalaesp. n. was reared from caterpillars of Chloropteryx n...

Background Twenty-three new species of the genus Calolydella Townsend, 1927 (Diptera: Tachinidae) are described, all reared from multiple species of wild-caught caterpillars across a wide variety of families (Lepidoptera: Crambidae; Erebidae; Geometridae; Hesperiidae; Lycaenidae; Nymphalidae; Pieridae; Riodinidae; and Sphingidae). All caterpillars...