What is the HAO working group?
From HO
The goal of the HAO working group (i.e., the HAO organizing committee and all the morphologists participating in this venture) is to develop an explicit, controlled vocabulary of morphological terms relating to Hymenoptera (the HAO) that:
- identifies synonyms (homologous structures called different names)
- textually defines, references, and figures each accepted term with images and annotations
- establishes and clarifies homologies between hymenopteran lineages
- is hierarchically arranged (e.g., scape is “part of” the antenna, which is “part of” the head)
- identifies taxon specific terms (e.g., the cenchrus is found only in “Symphyta”)
Some initial version of the HAO will be approved by the members of the International Society of Hymenopterists (ISH) and made available in a format that allows incorporation into databasing projects. The HAO will also be converted into an online, illustrated atlas of hymenopteran anatomy.
Who is the HAO working group
| member | affiliation | |
|---|---|---|
| Gavin Broad | g.broad@nhm.ac.uk | Natural History Museum |
| Andy Deans, chair | adeans@gmail.com | NC State University |
| Gary Gibson | Gibsong@agr.gc.ca | Canadian National Insect Collection |
| Norm Johnson | Johnson.2@osu.edu | Ohio State University |
| Susanne Schulmeister | schulmei@amnh.org | American Museum of Natural History |
| Mike Sharkey | msharkey@uky.edu | University of Kentucky |
| Bob Wharton | rawbaw2@tamu.edu | Texas A & M University |
Strategy for developing the HAO
The HAO organizing committee will develop the “backbone” of the hierarchy and then solicit volunteers to tackle components of the backbone.
The HymAToL grant is the perfect vehicle for jumpstarting the HAO project in that the hymenopteran body has already been partitioned by lab group for the purpose of coding morphological characters. Each lab group could be responsible for addressing their respective terminology and for drawing in other researchers that are not officially part of HymAToL (to make this a community effort). Current HymAToL assignments are listed below. Each lab would decide on whether to publish their own manuscripts relating to standardizing morphological terms (as well as who should author such publications).
| egg | unassigned |
| larva ("Symphyta") | unassigned |
| larva (Apocrita) | Dave Wahl (AEI) |
| adult head | Heraty lab (UC-Riverside) |
| adult mesosoma (thorax) | Ronquist lab (FSU) |
| adult legs | Ronquist lab (FSU) |
| wings | Sharkey lab (UKY) |
| metasoma (abdomen) | unassigned |
| female genitalia | Sharkey lab (UKY) |
| male genitalia | Schulmeister (AMNH) |
| surface sculpturing | Deans et al. (FSU) |
| propodeal carinae | Dave Wahl (AEI) |
| other terms* | unassigned |
*e.g., meconium, setae, sensilla, pores/glands, line vs. sulcus vs. carina, etc.
