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March 2010:  National Science Foundation funds Hairworm Biodiversity Survey of the New World.
The National  Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded  the Hairworm Biodiversity Survey Team a grant of $578,176 to study the diversity and systematics of hairworms in the Americas.  The grant is entitled: "Unraveling a Gordian knot: Biodiversity of Gordian worms, phylum Nematomorpha, in the New World".

 

June 2009:  Filling geographical gaps.
Andreas Schmidt-Rhaesa collaborated with colleagues from countries, from which no or only very rare information of the nematomorph fauna were known. These are: Estonia, Georgia, Spain, Turkey and Serbia. In each case, motivated local researchers are in close collaboration with Andreas. The outcome are new records and new species.

 

June 2009:  Seminar at the University Bielefeld.
On June 3, Andreas Schmidt-Rhaesa gave a talk in the Evolutionary Biology Seminar at the University Bielefeld, Germany entitled: “Manipulation of hosts by parasites and possible consequences for the evolution of the hosts. Example: horsehair worms (Nematomorpha)“.


March 2009: Nematomorph seminar presented at the Zoology Department at Oklahoma State University.
The Department of Zoology at the Oklahoma State University hosted a department seminar by Ben Hanelt entitled: “Untying a Gordian knot: The biology of freshwater nematomorphs”.  Ben was hosted by Matt and Melissa Bolek.


October 2008: Two new gordiid species collected from Africa.
Ben Hanelt spent six weeks in the field near Kisumu Kenya working on an NIH-funded schistosome project.  During this time, Ben was able collect snails infected with two different gordiid cysts.  Upon return to the laboratory, he and Matt Bolek infected crickets with these snails.  Adult worms recovered from the crickets revealed the two cyst types to represent two previously unknown gordiid species.


August 2008:  Undergraduate student awarded travel grant and presents paper at American Society of Parasitologists.
At the The 83rd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Parasitologists (ASP) in Arlington Texas, Whitney Doerfert presented an oral presentation entitled: The Chosen Frozen: Cold-Tolerance and Survival of Paragordius varius (Nematomorpha:Gordiida) Larvae.  Whitney is an undergraduate researcher at the University of New Mexico, in Ben Hanelt's lab.  To present this work, Whitney was awarded (by ASP) with a prestigious Marc Dresden Travel Grant.
To read the abstract (as a pdf), click here.


October 2007:  New species and records from Japanese nematomorphs.
An invitation to investigate nematomorphs around Lake Biwa in Southern Japan led to an ongoing collaboration of Andreas Schmidt-Rhaesa with several Japanese colleagues, during which one new species could be described and two species were determined that were unknown to Japan.
To see an abstract of work resulting from this collaboration, click here.




© Copyright 2010 Ben Hanelt, Matt Bolek, and Andreas Schmidt-Rhaesa
Updated: 
May 2010