{"id":18016,"date":"2012-12-26T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2012-12-26T10:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=18016"},"modified":"2013-05-10T10:48:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T14:48:00","slug":"new-species-of-wasp-named-after-wright-state-entomologist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2012\/12\/26\/new-species-of-wasp-named-after-wright-state-entomologist\/","title":{"rendered":"New species of wasp named after Wright State entomologist"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Biology professor John Stireman flanked by students in his lab: (left to right) Zach Burington, Dan Davis, Stireman, Karen Pedersen and Tiffany Brown.<\/p><\/div>\n

A strip of masking tape under his name on the office door identifies him as \u201cLord of the Flies.\u201d With a salt-and-pepper beard and countless jungle jaunts under his belt, he\u2019s become the Indiana Jones of insects at Wright State. And now, he has a wasp named after him.<\/p>\n

A newly described species of braconid wasp has been officially christened Ilatha stiremani<\/em> after Wright State entomologist John Stireman.<\/p>\n

The relatively large, colorful wasp was named in a scientific paper in honor of Stireman for his research help in identifying and providing information on tachinids, a large family of flies. Stireman\u2019s role was to examine the pupa\u2014which precedes the adult stage\u2014of flies that were carrying the newly identified parasitic wasp.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never had a species named after me before; it is an honor to be recognized in that way. I have friends who have species named after them, so now I feel better,\u201d Stireman said with a smile.<\/p>\n

However, he downplays the honor, saying it is not that unusual for newly identified species of insects to be named after someone and that there continues to be plenty of opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are hundreds of new species pinned in drawers in museums, but there are not enough knowledgeable people to look at those things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Don Cipollini, Ph.D., director of Environmental Sciences, said it is a tremendous honor to have one\u2019s name immortalized in the scientific name of a species.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn was honored because of his standing as one of the world\u2019s experts on tachinid flies, a host for this parasitic wasp,\u201d said Cipollini. \u201cIt is an honor for Wright State to have such well-respected researchers among its faculty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stireman has been heavily involved with researchers at other universities in a National Science Foundation funded project to take an inventory of the biodiversity in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador. The project has taken Stireman to Ecuador a half dozen times, working largely in elevations of between 7,000 and 8,000 feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe go into these cloud forests that are super-diverse\u2014really diverse plant communities, really diverse insect communities\u2014but we really know nothing about most of the species,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of the species are undescribed. Even the ones that we do know exist, we don\u2019t know anything about them\u2014what they eat, what eats them. You can use that information to understand the whole food web of an ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stireman\u2019s love of biology and insects developed as he was growing up in Utah. His father studied mosquitoes as a graduate student, and Stireman spent a lot of time hiking and backpacking.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re out there and you\u2019re seeing things and you want to know what they are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Stireman majored in biology at the University of Utah and obtained his doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, where he worked on an independent project that focused on flies. He did post doctorate work at Tulane and Iowa State universities, then landed a teaching job at Wright State in 2005.<\/p>\n

The visual evidence of Stireman\u2019s interest in biology spills from his office into the lobby, where Nature<\/em> magazines fan out and a poster of the birds of Ecuador is pinned to the wall.<\/p>\n

Stireman is passionate about the importance of identifying different species of insects, saying fewer than half the species are known.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing about a new species will probably not cure cancer or solve world hunger. But it could,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Stireman noted that study of Drosophila melanogaster<\/em>, the common fruit fly, has led to a much deeper knowledge about genetics and physiology. And he said parasitic insects, for example, could be used to kill crop pests without using pesticides.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery species has a lesson that it can teach us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A strip of masking tape under his name on the office door identifies him as \u201cLord of the Flies.\u201d Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":18015,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,2064,725,715,18,746,719],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-biology","category-home-news-sidebar","category-news","category-research","category-science-mathematics","category-special-categories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18016"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21460,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18016\/revisions\/21460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}