First Spotted Lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) observation of the year

 

Last year, I made my first Lycorma delicatula observation on 13 April 2025. This year, it was 10 days earlier (3 April 2025) in nearly the same spot. With the large number of (visible) egg masses in my neighborhood, I fear it will be another booming year. 

In 2025, I made 1,519 observations in Arlington, Virginia.

Two biodiversity/bioinformatics meetings in Belgium and the Netherlands (2-4 April 2015)

As Program Director for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, I participated in many meetings around bioinformatics. In April 2015, two important meetings were held in Oostende (Belgium) and Leiden (Netherlands).

The first of the two meetings took place in Oostende. The meeting was the Catalogue of Life Mini-Symposium held at the Vlaams Instituut Voor de Zee (VLIZ). In addition to staff from the Catalogue of Life, Donald Hobern (GBIF), David Remsen (Marine Biological Lab), and Tom Orrell (Smithsonian/ITIS) were attending. 

At the Symposium, I gave the following presentation:

Kalfatovic, M. (2015, April 2). Looking Forward: The Biodiversity Heritage Library. Catalogue of Life Mini-Symposium (CoL), Oostende (Belgium). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19393206

The weather in Oostende was challenging, high winds and rain; we also had to take a short ferry ride to the meeting space. All the things that make biodiversity meetings special.

Following the meeting in Oostende, many of the group moved on to Leiden for a focused meeting on the work of BHL, EOL, ITIS, and GBIF. In addition to those at the CoL meeting, Bob Corrigan (EOL), Peter Schalk (CoL/GBIF) were in attendance. The meetings were held in the offices of Naturalis, then still in their temporary quarters in the Pesthuis before moving to their new building.

Group photos are always a great part of the meeting, here, we posed as Dutch Masters:

I was also able to take a bit of personal time and visited Amsterdam, Ghent, and the fabulous tulip gardens of Keukenhof.

Meeting: 2014 BHL Technical Meeting (2-3 April 2014, St. Louis)

The 2014 Spring CNI meeting was being held in St. Louis and it seemed like a good opportunity to save on travel expenses and add on a BHL. 

We scheduled the BHL meeting for 2-3 April, right after CNI. BHL gathered the staff involved in technical development at the Missouri Botanical Garden. It was a useful meeting to cover key topics during the ongoing technical transition of BHL.

We stayed, as was often the case, at Trelease House, the apartment building the Missouri Botanical Garden provides for academic and research visitors. On the night of April 3, I woke up at 05:30 to my phone making emergency alert sound. 

Tornado warning in area with one spotted nearby (near the Ritz Carlton where CNI was in fact). Get up and out to main room. My suitemates were unaware of alert, so I got everyone up and we all go to shelter just as sirens go off outside and loudspeakers shout "take shelter immediately". Can't get to basement from front of building, so we go under stairs. I get messages from other BHL staff in other rooms that they're all sheltering. 

Group photo with World's Fair Donuts

Later that day, when we go to dinner in a downtown restaurant, there is another tornado warning and we all have to head to the basement of the restaurant for about 20 minutes.

 

Doug Holland (right) giving a tour of the Rare Book Collection (with Kia Siang Hock from the National Library Board, Singapore)

When there wasn't a threat of tornados, the Missouri Botanical Garden was looking great as springtime was underway.

Views of the Missouri Botanical Garden