Second round complete

 

I finished the second round of sampling. The two remaining sites in Kentucky, one site in Georgia, and one Maryland site provided partial samples. I was unable to find any Nigronia at the Tennessee site and the two North Carolina sites. I did get a full sample from the second Maryland site.

All told, the trip covered 3,360 miles, bringing my total so far to just over 11,000 miles. Next up, sampling in NY, PA, and Ontario.

There was one really exciting development on this trip: building on a meeting I had while sampling in Michigan, I will be collaborating with some scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to have to entire genome for Nigronia serricornis sequenced! This will help facilitate a lot more research and make some of the data analysis I have planned for this project much easier. So while not being able to collect all the larvae I had hoped is somewhat disappointing, it gives me a little more resources to use to pay for the genomic sequencing!