ENHS Nature Trails April 2004 Article 1

This month's speaker: Dr. Darlene Judd

If you hear a group of students chanting, "Follow the flies. Follow the flies," you might correctly suspect that Dr. Darlene Judd of the Oregon State University Zoology Department will be in the lead. Her research covering these much maligned insects, blamed for carrying diseases as well as thanked for pollinating some plant species, has taken her in many fascinating directions which she will share with us Friday evening. And again, like many of our speakers, she grew up in an atmosphere nurturing a curiosity for our natural world.

Dr. Judd grew up south of the Mason Dixon line in the pine barrens of Southern New Jersey. (These pine barrens to the casual observer may seem void of interesting attributes, but the state of New Jersey in cooperation with the Federal government had the foresight to preserve a large portion of these pinelands in 1978.*) This special environmental niche provided the early backdrop for Dr. Judd's formative years. Here's what she has to say about those years in the pine barrens:

"My father was from Appalachia and was an avid reader and outdoorsman. He knew all the birds, fish, mammals and trees. We spent many hours scouring the barrens and hardwood forests for everything from chinquapins to tea berry, to tracking large and small mammals, to scouring the beach for shells and horseshoe crabs. My mother worked with natural crafts, dried flowers, seed pods and grasses used to design ornaments and art. While I didn't appreciate her for her art work at the time, it clearly increased my knowledge and understanding of this unique environment as we made regular collections for her craft."

During these pineland explorations, I suspect Darlene began her observations of the insect world that later became her passion and then her profession. She remembers, "My father was very supportive [of her interest in entomology], although unclear on how I could make a decent living with my hobby. My family thought of my interest in entomology as hobby, not a means to a profession. I can still remember my mother saying, 'They're really going to pay you to collect flies?'"

Teachers were not a major influence on Darlene's interests until she got into college. After receiving her undergraduate degrees from OSU, she used her skill at working and identifying flies to gain appointments at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, the British Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. "At each of these great institutions, I met individuals who offered advice that refocused my career goals."

In December of 1995 Dr. Judd earned her Ph.D. from Texas A&M University; "however," she says, "most of my research was completed at the Smithsonian Institution in the Museum of Natural History." She remained there until 1998, then accepted a position in the Department of Entomology as an Assistant Professor at Oregon State University. Today she both teaches and does research, focusing on the archaic fly family Tanyderdae. According to information from her Curriculum Vitae on her web page
http://www.science.oregonstate.edu/systematics/juddd/djcv.html
"[Research] results . . . are expected to significantly impact current hypotheses on character evolution and phylogeny of Diptera, provide new insights on global biogeography and contribute data critical to world conservation areas and biodiversity."

Dr. Judd has authored and contributed to numerous publications, participated in many academic symposiums and given many public lectures as well as developed programs for grade school education. Among other awards, she received the 1995 John Henry Comstock Award for Outstanding Graduate Student SW Branch, Entomological Society of America.

The title of Dr. Judd's talk stems from the "many exotic, exciting and difficult areas" she's had the opportunity to travel in search of rare flies. Her most memorable expeditions have been to Papua New Guinea, Chile and Tasmania.

What are you going to talk about on the 16th Dr. Judd?

"Flies, flies, and more flies and their patterns of geographic distribution. I've been fortunate to receive funding from NSF for a number of projects aimed at elucidating patterns of relationship among primitive flies. My students and I work on a range of fly groups, from vectors of pathogens of West Nile virus, to agricultural pests of grass seed, with the goal of understanding larger questions in biology, such as the development of blood-feeding."

I'll leave the telling of fly stories to Darlene for Friday night, but there's more about the pinelands of her youth below - Editor

Photos of beautiful wing patterns on Tanyderus flies:

*"The global significance of the pinelands is shown by its designation as the Pinelands National Reserve and as a United Nations International Biosphere Reserve in 1983." The New Jersey Pine Barrens, with its sandy and acidic soils, covers over 1 million acres in southern and central New Jersey, including the "Outer Coastal Plain." Because of the continual use of fire by indigenous populations, most species of flora in "The Pinelands" are adapted to fire, specifically, the dominant pine, Pinus rigida (pitch pine). Interestingly, for "geologic and climatic reasons, partially relating to glaciation events, many species are at their range limit (northern or southern) in the Pinelands." Considerable more specific information, including photos of the spectacular flora, is available on the website:
http://www.georgian.edu/pinebarrens/

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