2014 in Review

Hard to believe that another year has passed. This has by far been one of the busiest years I’ve had, but I would not trade it for anything. Besides all of the responsibilities of being a graduate student (field work, thesis, being a TA), I managed to travel pretty extensively. I spent three weeks in Kenya collecting ticks with my adviser (posts to come later) and came right back to the US to go on a family vacation to Colorado two days after returning.

Being an avid collector, I tried to get my hands on as many inverts as possible while travelling to all these amazing places, either in photos or in a vial for later pinning/identification. Always looking around yielded specimens I never thought I would obtain, which gives me even more information about an area or even the specimens themselves when I was able to observe them in their natural environments.

Pinned insects from Kenya (phone photo)

 

Pinned insects from Colorado (phone photo)

The insects were plentiful and the collecting was good everywhere I traveled this year. I could not have asked for more. I have been extremely fortunate and am looking forward to more in 2015.

I could post more, but with the Kenya posts in the works and a nice summary of posts below, I figured I could let you, the reader, decide what you want to read and enjoy the photos that go with each post.

January – tarantulas, bugs in cyberspace, lubbers

February – whites tree frogs

March – things with 8 legs

April – collecting trips and sand spiders

August – Great Sand Dunes National Park

December – keeping live invertebrates, year in review

 

For those of you on social media, you can follow Insects and Arachnids on Facebook and Twitter:

Facebook: search Insects and Arachnids

Twitter: @damondiadema

 

I hope you all had a great 2014 and I hope 2015 is even better!