Joe Girgente Curador

Entrou: 10 de ago. de 2016 Última vez ativo: 28 de mar. de 2024 iNaturalist

I'm currently a Master's student at Texas Tech where my project aims to understand the cause of size variation in Hylogomphus geminatus across the Apalachicola drainage. I hold a B.S. in Wildlife Conservation, another in Mechanical Engineering, and a minor in Entomology, all from Virginia Tech. I focus primarily on insects, specifically aquatic macroinvertebrates and have worked in aquatic entomology labs since 2019. I'm a Stroud Society for Freshwater Science certified taxonomist for family-level aquatic macroinvertebrates of the east coast (US) and certified to the genus level for EPT in that region as well.

I do a fair bit of specimen collecting for ID and DNA purposes (I don't do the DNA portion) and am happy to ship specimens of interest. I collect a lot of parasitoids to get them under the scope, so please let me know if there's anything you'd like me to keep my eyes open for.

I also enjoy birding and herping and have worked as a shorebird technician on the Eastern Shore of VA and as a Golden-winged Warbler and Cerulean Warbler technician in West Virginia. Most of my free time is spent traveling and photographing birds and insects wherever I go. Feel free to tag me in posts or tell me I'm wrong.

I rarely ID mayflies to species, but I'm always happy to take a look and I often return to IDs I've made and refine them further as I learn more. Unfortunately, family is as far as I'm willing to go on most mayfly IDs. If you have a Facebook, I strongly encourage you to join the Mayfly Identification page where there are specialists from all over the world who can do much more for you than I can.

I also try to contribute all arthropod sightings to BugGuide where there are holes to fill. My BugGuide profile lists some of my state records there to date.

I post many photos to my Instagram: @Joes_outdoor_adventures

Some year in review stats:
2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

And here is a map of my identifications.

For North American mayfly taxonomy and a species list, see here
For world mayfly taxonomy, see here
Separating Baetid nymphs from Siphlonurid nymphs here.

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