Puerto Rico – Fieldwork searching for paedomorphic beetles, their larvae and females – June, 2022

El Yunque National Forest, El Verde Field Station. We spent three weeks collecting and setting up traps in various parts of the island, hunting paedomorphic beetles and their semaphoronts.
Mt. Britton tower. From left to right: J. P. Kole (Montana State University), Lucas Geisler, Caroline Amalie Høegh-Guldberg and Vinicius Ferreira (University of Copenhagen).
Bosque Estatal Toro Negro.
The famous coqui. Endemic to Puerto Rico, these little frogs provide the theme sounds for the island and several species can be found throughout the island.
Playa Escondida, Fajardo.
A very dry forest in Ponce. Quite different environment from what most people would think of PR.

Belgium – Institut royal des Sciences naturelles de Belgique – May, 2022

The IRSB is one of the more important Lycidae collections in the world, especially for containing many new world types, mainly the ones described by Jules Bourgeois and some of the Félix Édouard Guérin-Méneville, as well as syntypes from Gorham and material compared to the Kirsch collection.

Old-fashioned cabinets, containing hundreds of treasures not only of Lycidae, but many other paedomorphic lineages, including Lampyridae, Phengodidae and Cantharidae.
Containing my excitement after finding out about the nearly 100 new world Lycidae types from the collection!

ForBio and University of Gothenburg course: Target capture for Illumina sequencing Workshop – Sweden, Tjarno – March, 2022

The workshop was held in the Tjärnö Marine Laboratory
and sponsored by Gothenburg University and ForBio. https://www.gu.se/en/tjarno
Great group of researchers, awesome learning experience! I am looking forward to apply what was learned here in beetles! Check people’s Twitter accounts at https://twitter.com/neolycus/status/1507300157636939780

England – The Natural History Museum, London – February, 2022

The Natural History Museum, London – This visit was focused on the identification and documentation of lycid types from the Neotropical region, which include several paedomorphic lineages.
The already classic photo with Darwin – Charlie, as I call him. Note my excitement at the moment this photo was being taken.
Calopteron is probably the second most-commonly found Lycidae in the Americas. While this group is not paedomorphic, several paedomorphic species are closely related to this genus, and studying their types is an important component of future phylogenetic studies relating to the paedomorphic lycids.
What is a Russian (Alexandra Tokareva), a Swiss (Michael Geiser) and a Brazilian (myself) were doing in the bar? If you said talking about beetles you were right!

France – Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris – November-December, 2021

Jardin des Plantes – many buildings linked to the Natural History Museum are either inside the park or surrounding it. Despite the cold weather, surprisingly, the park is quite busy all day.
The Lycidae collection in the MNHN. Myself for scale. Perhaps the most important Lycidae collection in the world, holding hundreds of types, many of which are hidden in the collection. The visit was focused on Lycidae, but also other beetle groups that displayed paedomorphic features.
A typical Maurice Pic drawer. Sometimes you will spend more time figuring out Pic’s handwriting than actually looking at the beetles!
A great opportunity to finish up some projects with Robert Constantin – squishy beetle legend and a connoisseur of the Elateroidea collection in the MNHN.
Lunch time was also the perfect time to visit the exhibits of the museum. A snapshot view of the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution.
Pleasant surprise to meet Coleopterists which, of course, had to go out for drinks and photograph themselves at Rue Linné. From left to right:Lech Karpiński, Marcin Jan Kaminski, myself and in the lower row, Ryan Lumen.