- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
She's been there. She's doing that.
Charlotte is a wife, a mother of two children under age three with no outside childcare, a research fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), and a talented scientific illustrator and creative artist.
She moved cross-country during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to finish her dissertation, all the while tackling multiple obstacles and health issues.
It's been a 5-year whirlwind: marriage in 2018 to artist George Albert, birth of their son Griffin in April 2020, and birth of their daughter Marceline “Marcy” in October 2022.
“I truly commend Charlotte for her recent publication of the first chapter of her dissertation," said Diane Ullman, UC Davis distinguished professor and a former chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology. “She has overcome many obstacles, and I deeply respect her capacity to balance the science and research she loves, with being a mother of two, a wife and a devoted daughter.”
Now a resident of Silver Spring, Md., Charlotte studies systematics, phylogenetics, insect biotechnology, genomics, speciation, and macroevolution, among other fields. She enrolled in the UC Davis entomology graduate program in 2015, and anticipates receiving her doctorate in "no later than June 2023—hopefully before."
“Charlotte is a fantastic artist, as well as an excellent scientist,” Ullman said. I look forward to watching her as she finishes her Ph.D. and develops her career. My own daughter was born the year after I finished my Ph.D., and I certainly remember the challenge of being a mother, a wife, and taking care of aging parents while working to establish an academic career."
“Without a doubt," Ullman said, "I would not change a thing—I feel enormously grateful for the joy of my family, and for having the opportunity to simultaneously enjoy a full career in the sciences, as well as connecting art and science.”
Alberts' paper, “A New Species of Saropogon Loew, 1847 (Diptera, Asilidae) from Arizona, with a Review of the Nearctic Species North of Mexico,” is her first journal publication.
“This new species of Saropogon (family Asilidae) was a known new species when it was collected for the first time in 1964,” Alberts said. “It wasn't until a community scientist posted pictures of this beautiful ‘fire-like' species to iNaturalist and BugGuide and requested identification that the description of this new species as well as a review of the entire Nearctic Saropogon, north of Mexico, became a priority. Publications like this are a great example of why community scientist and scientist engagement are so important. Websites like iNaturalist and BugGuide are an incredible resource for both and facilitate the finding and describing of new species.”
Alberts praised the work of macro photographer Jeff Gruber of Madison, Wisc., a regular contributor to BugGuide and iNaturalist who provided the Saropogon pyrodes image in ZooKeys, and UC Davis alumna Keely Davies, the illustration. Davies (biognome.art on Instagram) holds a bachelor's degree in animal biology (2019) and a degree in scientific illustration (2021) from California State University, Monterey Bay.
Charlotte's family and friends on Facebook lauded her newly published research: “Wow, what a year you are having. Congratulations!” and “You are just killing it, woman!” and “YASSS, asilid queen! Congrats!”
A native of Plainfield, N.H, Charlotte is a 2015 graduate of St. Lawrence University, Canton, N.Y., where she majored in conservation biology and developed an interest in assassin flies--and in celebrating World Robber Fly Day every April 30.
Bohart Museum. At UC Davis, she worked on the identification and database of the Asilidae collection at the Bohart Museum of Entomology from August 2015 until June 2021, while also engaged in numerous art projects and serving a year as secretary of the Entomology Graduate Student Association.
Charlotte has collected insects in 16 states and four countries, including Belize, Namibia, and Sweden. She presented a virtual seminar on “Asilidae of Belize” at the 2021 Entomological Society of America meeting.
How difficult is it to juggle so many roles? “I would be lying if I said it was easy,” Alberts said. “Being a mom, a wife, and a graduate student is a significant challenge. Balancing work and life is a skill that no one can teach you and takes a lot of trial and error. Thankfully, with the support and patience from my principal investigator (Diane Ullman), my advisor (UC Davis distinguished professor Rick Karban), my thesis committee (Ullman, research advisor Torsten Dikow of NNMH, and Jason Bond, Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics, Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences), my husband, and family, I have been able to continue to work on my PhD through a pandemic, multiple health issues, moving across the country, and having two children. Though being a mom and a graduate student is a lot of work, and exhausting, I wouldn't change it for the world. My family brings so much joy to my life and fuels me to push forward, one step at a time!”
More Flexibility. Alberts noted that being a graduate student “has allowed me more flexibility as a working mom to also care for my children than a typical 9 to 5 job. Instead of putting the kids in daycare, I have chosen to work during nap times, after and before bedtime, for chunks during the day when my husband can take over, weekends, and during my son's preschool, twice a week. Sometimes it's challenging to not have the same routine every day. and there are never enough hours in a day, but I do get to be a part of my children's childhoods, and I am forever grateful for that!”
“Being a mom and a graduate student means that I am learning every day how to be more creative and flexible with my time,” she said. “I've learned how to modify my workspace to be available to my children. One of the many ways that having children has changed me is that I have less anxiety about my work. I used to sit on an email sometimes for days because of the fear of not being good enough or doing something wrong. Or sometimes, I wouldn't ask for help with something or ask how something was done because of the fear of being judged for not being able to do it myself. Since having my children, I've had to push my anxieties and fears aside because I simply don't have the time I used to have to worry about such things. I've learned to accept help from others and that I am not expected to know everything, especially in graduate school.”
Alberts remembers how much she liked interning at NMNH in the summer of 2014 and working with Dikow on identifying specimens of Asilidae to genus. She then won a graduate student fellowship (July-September 2016) at NMNH; Dikow served as her advisor. "I hope to do my postdoctoral fellowship there," she said.
Meanwhile, Charlotte Alberts is geared toward finishing her dissertation while balancing her work-home life. “My family brings so much joy to my life,” she reiterated, “and fuels me to push forward, one step at a time!”
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The “makings,” is now published. It's the first of what is expected to be many in his entomological career.
“A Checklist of Mantodea of Belize, with a Regional Key to Species,” co-authored with UC Davis professor and arachnologist Jason Bond, is now online on ZooKeys.
“Lohit did a great job on this, and there's even an online Lucid identification key,” said Bond, the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology's Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair in Insect Systematics and the newly selected associate dean of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
“This is a great example of undergraduate research opportunities in entomology,” said Bond. Garikipati worked in the Bond laboratory as a lab assistant before and after receiving his bachelor's degree in entomology in June 2019. He is now studying for his master's degree in biology at Towson University, Md., with advisor Christopher Oufiero.
For the ZooKeys publication, Garikipati and Bond updated the list of known Mantodea in Belize, adding 12 new species to the country records, bringing the total known species of Mantodea in Belize to 21. They provided information on habitat and microhabitat observations; and a regional dichotomous key and Lucid interactive key to known species in Belize. They also included a list of other possibly endemic species. In addition, the scientists remarked on the merit of further sampling efforts in central America, based on recent studies.
“Our findings,” they wrote in their abstract, “suggest that our understanding of Central American Mantodean diversity could be vastly improved by further documentation.”
Grateful to Jason Bond. “After a probably too lengthy amount of time, I am extremely pleased to present my first publication,” Lohit wrote on his Facebook page. “I cannot understate how grateful I am to Jason Bond for providing his time and advice to help guide me through this process, it quite literally would not have been possible without his enthusiasm and support. Thanks to the other members of the Bond lab as well for their advice and critique of various parts of the manuscript during its development. Hopefully we can continue to update and document the fauna of the southern Yucatan peninsula and further our understanding of mantis distribution.”
Mantids have long fascinated Lohit, who grew up in Pleasanton, Alameda County. “I first became interested in praying mantises when I was about six years old,” he said. “I found a praying mantis on my aunt's curtain in India and had no clue what the insect was! After a lot of Googling and finding out that people kept various species as pets, I started rearing both native and exotic species.”
“Admittedly, mantises are not the easiest organism to rear; it took me a few years before I bred my first species, Mantis religiosa (Linnaeus),” Lohit said. “I was really fascinated just by their hunting methods and cryptic strategies; I think I could watch them hunt another thousand times and still be as fascinated. Currently, I think I'm pushing 40 or 50 species that I have reared, with representatives from most families. Captive observations have been a large part of fueling my interest and raising questions about these organisms, as they've afforded me the chance to watch organisms that are often rarely found in the wild.”
High Biodiversity. The June 22-July 6 bioblitz, led by biology professors and Bohart associates Fran Keller of Folsom Lake College and Dave Wyatt of Sacramento City College and headquartered at Toucan Ridge Ecology and Education Society (T.R.E.E.S) Field Station and Research Center, spanned four locations. The area boasts "some of the highest biodiversity the country has to offer," according to its website.
“Lohit and Brian Fridie (undergraduate at the University of Florida, Gainesville) captured many more individuals and more species than I ever saw on any of our trips,” said Keller, who holds a doctorate in entomology from UC Davis, where she studied with major professor Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum and a UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology. “Granted, I was collecting everything and leading the trip but having specialists on the trip helps us gather and document insect diversity greater than we could do with just Dave and I collecting.”
“Possibly the thing that surprised me the most was the sheer underrepresentation of taxa in the country,” Garikipati said. “I had expected to maybe find one or two new country records, but I did not expect to more than double the number of species recorded from the country! The other thing that astounded me was how numerous and diverse insect populations were as well (this was my first time collecting in the tropics). Despite the sheer scope of the environment there, mantises were not an uncommon find (though they are still as a whole much more difficult to find than many insect groups).”
“It was a real pleasure searching for mantises in Belize,” Garikipati said. “My favorite find was most likely seeing wild individuals of species I'd only be able to see in pinned collections and on iNaturalist. There is something so enchanting about seeing an animal in its natural habitat, and these observations bring up many questions. It was definitely a fun experience and I am very happy to be able to contribute to our understanding of these animals.”
More Than 50 Specimens. He and his colleagues collected more than 50 specimens from 14 genera and 19 species as part of the survey. Using the specimens they collected, they generated a dichotomous key and a Lucid interactive key.
“The aim is to provide both citizens and entomologists unfamiliar with this group with an easy method to identify collected species with high accuracy,” wrote Garikipati and Bond. “Photographs in the Lucid key are included to aid with character determination.”
In their publication, the scientists thanked Julio Rivera (an entomologist at Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola in Lima, Peru) for his assistance, patience, and providing some of his unpublished work to assist in identification. “We also thank Brendon Boudinot (UC Davis doctoral alumnus) for his boundless energy, support, and methodological feedback; Philip S. Ward (professor and ant specialist at UC Davis) for assisting in identification of Formicidae; Brian T. Fridie (undergraduate at the University of Florida, Gainesville) for his assistance in collecting mantises; and one anonymous reviewer for feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript.”
Garikipati's future plans? “I am looking to continue to incorporate ecology into my comparative morphology work,” he said. “Currently, I am investigating diversity in prey capture mechanisms in mantises, which may have implications for prey specialization.” His thesis title: “Diversity of Prey Capture Mechanisms in Praying Mantises: Implication for Prey Specialization.”
“Mantises,” he said, “have long been homogenized--until relatively recently--both in terms of their behavior and morphology by the general public, and I'm hoping by showcasing diversity both in behavior and morphology, the public's perception of these animals will change. “And this research will provide us valuable insight into the impact mantises have in the ecosystems they are in, as well as their potential use as bioindicators for conservation purposes.”