Prince of Wales: Ancient life discovered in Southeast Alaska By NED ROZELL - In a world crawling with insects, those billions of tiny bodies fall into just 30 major descriptive groups, known as orders. That’s why Derek Sikes, curator of insects at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, was disappointed with a graduate student when she failed to identify a creature that was wandering her plots on Prince of Wales Island.

The wingless ancient insect Caurinus tlagu discovered on Prince of Wales Island, as seen magnified by a scanning electron microscope. Alaska researchers named the insect with the Tlingit word for “ancient.”
Image by J. Stockbridge.

“Every entomologist should be able to ID every insect to its order just by looking at it,” Sikes said.

Jill Stockbridge, doing research for her master’s degree work on spiders and beetles on Prince of Wales Island, tried her best to identify “little tiny spots jumping around like fleas.” When she could hesitate no more, she called Sikes for help.

“I thought I knew what it was,” Sikes said. “It had features of a wingless wasp or a bark louse, but it wouldn’t key out.”

“I felt way better when he didn’t know either,” Stockbridge said recently in the Entomology Lab in the UA Museum of the North in Fairbanks.

The tiny animal, now known as Caurinus tlagu, was different because it is a species new to science. It hops in a small group of snow scorpionflies that includes just one other species.

Sikes, who shared with Stockbridge the honor of naming the insect with the Tlingit word “tlagu,” meaning ancient, was at first so baffled that he posted its photo on Facebook. He hoped his entomologist friends might have a clue.

One did. Michael Ivie recognized that the elusive insect resembled one studied by another colleague, Loren Russell of Oregon. In the late 1970s, Russell wrote his dissertation on a similar creature he found in Oregon. In exquisite detail, Russell wrote of his many observations of the insect, such as its appetite for a leafy liverwort plant and that it had no apparent predators in the miniature rainforest jungle of spiders and psuedoscorpions. He also documented its ability to cement its eggs to leaves with a dark lacquer, its lifespan of more than one year and its peculiar tendency to headbutt its food.

In May, Russell traveled to Prince of Wales Island with Sikes and Stockbridge. In the lush greenery of the sample sites, Russell demonstrated how to collect the insect. Like a museum curator dusting a display, he wristed a soft brush on the greenish portion of stumps with a collection cloth beneath. Though Stockbridge had only gathered 37 of the creatures in her initial sampling (along with 10,218 beetles), the Alaska entomologists now know how and where to find lots of Caurinus tlagu. - More...
Monday PM - July 15, 2013

Ketchikan & Southeast Alaska: Alaska Redistricting Board Adopts Final Plan - After a prolonged process, the Alaska Redistricting Board approved new legislative districts on July 14th. The current legislative map under which the 2012 elections were held had been thrown out by the Alaska Supreme Court on the grounds that they were in violation of the Alaska Constitution. The Board was ordered to redraw the districts which resulted in the new plan adopted Sunday.

According the Board’s attorney, the adopted plan will be submitted to the Alaska Supreme Court for its approval no later than Thursday, July 18th. If the new plan is approved by the Court and barring any successful legal challenges, the new districts will be in effect for the 2014 election.

Senate District Q, which encompasses Ketchikan and 26 other communities in Southeast Alaska, will become Senate District R and will include the communities of Petersburg, Kupreanof, and Tenakee Springs.

Sen. Bert Stedman commented today on his blog noting that Haines and Klukwan will no longer be in his Senate district and instead will be paired with Skagway, Juneau and Gustavus in the new Senate District Q (currently Senate District P represented by Senator Egan). Stedman's district will now be Senate District R and will include Sitka, Petersburg, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Metlakatla and Hydaburg.

Stedman said, "I had the pleasure of representing Petersburg and Kupreanof in the State Senate from 2003 until the 2012 election. My family has always had close ties to Petersburg and Kupreanof and I welcome these communities back. I also look forward to getting to know the residents of Tenakee Springs."

For the remainder of the 28th Legislature which includes the upcoming legislative session that convenes in January of 2014, Stedman will continue to represent the residents of the existing Senate District Q including Haines and Klukwan. Stedman will officially represent the new Senate District R when the 29th Legislature begins in January of 2015.

Stedman is not up for reelection in 2014 as he was elected to a four year term in 2012 and the population difference between Senate Districts Q and R is only 9.3%. There must be at least a 25% difference in constituency between the two districts in order to require a Senate term to be truncated. Because of truncation, in 2014 an election will be held in 14 of the 20 new Senate districts.

Ketchikan was previously in House District 33 and Senate District Q. House District 33 and Senate District Q will now include downtown Juneau, Douglas, Haines and Skagway. Ketchikan will now be in House District 36 and Senate District R. - More...
Monday PM - July 15, 2013

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