Looking back at 2009

In a brief editorial to the latest Phasmid Study Group Newsletter I said that for phasmatologists it had been a good year with several major papers (I will say something about the partial review of Phyllium by Hennemann et al soon), a field guide to the Australian stick and leaf insects by Paul Brock (I reviewed it here), and a number of new species bought into culture.

Personally it's also been good, in particular a trip to Costa Rica but also e-Biosphere, work on the Blattodea SpeciesFile, visiting the SpeciesFile team and a new job at the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.

In the blogosphere (bugosphere?) we have seen new offers from Erica McAlister (Curator of Diptera's Blog) and a student blog from the entomologists at the University of Illinois (I went there this year too).

It seems the Amateur Entomologists' Society had a good year too.

So despite what you may hear or feel, there are still some good, new and exciting things happening in the world of insects.

Entom News

The latest edition of the Natural History Museum Entomology Department's newsletter, Entom News, has this to say:

"Ed Baker began a project funded by the Orthopterists’ Society to photograph exemplars of all cockroach taxa in the NHM collection, including all types. This work is being supervised by George Beccaloni and the images will go in to the Blattodea Species File Online (http://blattodea.speciesfile.org/HomePage.aspx)."

Perhaps I'm slowly becoming famous!