Critter ID station at the swap!

[prattreef]

We are happy to announce a new feature for the swap--A micro critter ID station. As luck would have it, one of our esteemed former speakers Leslie Harris, hot off of what will surely be her bravura performance at the BAS meeting on Fri. evening has agreed to (wo)man a critter and pest ID station for us. Leslie is a world class polychaete worm and micro critter geek ( see bio below). So please feel free to bring samples of things mucky and icky for her to ID. We'll have a microscope and laptop set up so everyone can join in the fun.

Leslie Harris is a certifiable worm obsessive, invert addict and photographer. Her day job is as collections manager of the AHF Polychaete Collection at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. At nights she is either doing consulting work (polychaete taxonomy & ecology for a variety of studies), catching up on past studies or editing photos. She also travels a lot to weird and wonderful places in search of small strange inverts to photograph, study and marvel at.

AND FYI, other national notables will be in attendance-- Sanjay, Scott Fellman, Christine Williams, Joe Yaiullo, Todd Gardner to name a few will all be there, so don't be shy and take advantage of the opportunity to interact with some of the biggest names in the hobby.

 

[ryangrieder]

very cool!

 

[Alex]

That sounds great. will she be checking corals for any critters ? or just showing us what can be on corals.

 

[Arati]

thats really cool, be sure to post what kind of crazy stuff is found.

 

[prattreef]

More like looking at anything anyone wants and/ or she finds interesting. Corals and fish bore her lol.

 

[ryangrieder]

Corals and fish bore her lol.

ha, typical... just like my girl :wink1: lol

 

[LeslieH]

Corals & fish are all very nice but for real excitement there's nothing like a good worm!

I'd be happy to check out corals for micro-critters as long as they can fit under a microscope. Which reminds me - Randy, make sure the microscope is a dissecting scope. The folks at BAR brought in a compound/slide microscope which was useless. :lol2:

If Randy really does come up with a video system for the scope we can make screen grabs of the interesting stuff then do a quick slide show afterwards or post them here.