ESA 2013 in Austin, TX

For people who know me well and spend a lot of time with me, they may be continually frustrated by my fascination with insects. I say this because anytime I happen to spot a small critter flying around me or scurrying along the ground I almost always will stop to take a closer look or try to catch it (unless it is of the stinging or biting variety!). The sheer diversity of species, morphology, functions, and adaptations of insects is something I find intriguing, and is why I can see myself using them as my primary study organisms for the rest of my career.

One of the many display cases in the exhibit hall

This past week I was lucky enough to attend the 2013 Meeting of the Entomological Society of America (a conference of insect geeks in plain speak) in Austin, Texas, with my labmate Ganesh and his wife Sara. The main reason we were there was to give a 10 minute presentation of our research to the wider scientific community, and also to attend the talks of other students or researchers which we found to be of interest. There were many interesting talks which I attended, many of which have given me some excellent ideas which I can apply to my own research. There was also an awesome exhibit hall with many companies and organizations presenting. The highlight which everyone was interested in was the Bioquip stall; this had many spectacularly colourful, bizzare, and huge insect specimens for sale (such as the butterflies pictured above), various insect collection devices, and even live hissing cockroaches, scorpions, and tarantulas for sale. As for my own talk, it went pretty well considering it was my first ever presentation at a conference, and I'm looking forward to trying this again. You can see the presentation I gave below:

It was my first time visiting Austin and only my second time in Texas. It definitely seemed like a fun and busy city. It had a lot of restaurants and bars around downtown but also a lot of green space relatively close to the city centre, which was cool. The layout of the city was nice, with the bridge and road of Constitution Ave lining up perfectly with the huge State Capitol, which then backs onto the University of Texas. The campus itself is sprawling, perhaps even larger than LSU's. The football stadium is definitely larger, holding slightly over 100,000 Texas Longhorn fans. We also visited Mount Bonnell, the Austin Botanic Gardens, and Barton Springs pool. It's really just great to be travelling to new places again after a while, as I haven't done it since Alaska.

Downtown Austin

In the botanic gardens

Texas State Capitol

The University of Texas Football Stadium (capacity: 100,000)

On the way to Austin we made a little detour to visit Ganesh’s friend Arjun in Waco, Texas. The city itself was nothing special, but is home to Baylor University, which we went and toured around the morning after arriving. We then drove a couple of hours north to visit Dinosaur Valley State Park which was really cool. There you can see dinosaur footprints probably belonging to the large herbivore Astrodon, and also tracks of the predatory Acrocanthosaurus, a dinosaur similar in function and ferocity to Tyrannasaurus rex. The prints are estimated to be approximately 110 million years old, which is simply amazing! On top of that the area was beautiful, especially because the leaves of trees are changing colour to the browns and reds of autumn. 

Footprint of Acrocanthosaurus

In Dinosaur Valley State Park