S2E8: Two episodes in one! First, a new Taylor Swift millipede, then ectoparasites and mites!

Dr. Derek Hennen works for the Virginia Department of Agriculture as the Slow the Spread Coordinator monitoring the spongy moth populations in the state.

He talks to co-host Brian Patrick about his paper in the April 15th, 2022, issue of ZooKeys in which he and his coauthors describe 17 new species of millipedes from the eastern United States.

We discuss this massive work on millipedes from eastern US, and particularly the group restricted to the Appalachians, how to find millipedes, and how a species named after Taylor Swift got its name!

The title of the paper is “A revision of the wilsoni species group in the millipede genus NannariaChamberlin, 1918 (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Xystodesmidae).” The paper is currently available here: https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/73485/

To learn more about Derek, follow him on Twitter, @derekhennen, or his millipede account, @DearMillipede.

Ricardo Bassini-Silva is an acarologist and post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Pathology at the Universidade Estadual Paulista in Saő Paulo, Brazil.

In this episode, he tells us about the new genus of mites he and his coauthors have published in their recent paper in the April issue of the Journal of the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington. We discuss the diversity of mites, the process of taxonomic reclassification, and the wonderful world of ectoparasitism.

The title of the paper is “A New Genus for Euschoengastia chisosensis Wrenn, Baccus, and Loomis, 1976 (Trombidiformes: Trombiculidae).” The paper is currently available here: https://doi.org/10.4289/0013-8797.123.4.693

To learn more about Ricardo Bassini-Silva and his work, follow him on instagram @RicardoBassini.