An appreciation of Lubomír Masner on the occasion of his 75 th birthday

Amid the whirlwind of everyday life, we too rarely take advantage of the opportunity to express our appreciation to those who have had a signifi cant infl uence on our lives and careers. Just such a chance presents itself: on April 18, 2009, Lubomír Masner celebrated his 75th birthday. To commemorate this auspicious occasion, I asked a number of colleagues to contribute papers for this issue of ZooKeys. Th eir enthusiastic response follows. But fi rst, I present a brief summarization of the career and scientifi c contributions of Dr. Masner. Lubo earned the degrees of Bachelor of Science in Zoology and Master of Science in Entomology at Charles University in Prague in 1952 and 1957 respectively. He received his doctorate in Entomology from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1962. During the period from 1957 –1964 he worked at the Institute of Entomology of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague. From 1964–1965 he was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the Biocontrol Laboratory of Agriculture Canada in Belleville, Ontario. Th is was followed by another NRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, British Columbia. Th e bulk of his professional career, between the years 1969 and 1996, was spent as a Research Scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada on the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa, Ontario. Th ere he now continues his work in retirement as an Honorary Research Associate. During his career Lubo has received a number of awards. Th ese include postdoctoral fellowships from the University of California, Berkeley (1969), the New Zealand Department of Scientifi c and Industrial Research (1983), the Commonwealth Scientifi c and Industrial Research Organisation of Australia (1983), and a visiting fellowship from the Japanese Society for Promotion of Science (1996). He is an external collaboraZooKeys 20: 1–20 (2009)

Amid the whirlwind of everyday life, we too rarely take advantage of the opportunity to express our appreciation to those who have had a signifi cant infl uence on our lives and careers.Just such a chance presents itself: on April 18, 2009, Lubomír Masner celebrated his 75 th birthday.To commemorate this auspicious occasion, I asked a number of colleagues to contribute papers for this issue of ZooKeys.Th eir enthusiastic response follows.But fi rst, I present a brief summarization of the career and scientifi c contributions of Dr. Masner.Lubo earned the degrees of Bachelor of Science in Zoology and Master of Science in Entomology at Charles University in Prague in 1952 and 1957 respectively.He received his doctorate in Entomology from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1962.During the period from 1957 -1964 he worked at the Institute of Entomology of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague.From 1964-1965 he was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the Biocontrol Laboratory of Agriculture Canada in Belleville, Ontario.Th is was followed by another NRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, British Columbia.Th e bulk of his professional career, between the years 1969 and 1996, was spent as a Research Scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada on the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa, Ontario.Th ere he now continues his work in retirement as an Honorary Research Associate.
During his career Lubo has received a number of awards.Th ese include postdoctoral fellowships from the University of California, Berkeley (1969), the New Zealand Department of Scientifi c and Industrial Research (1983), the Commonwealth Scientifi c and Industrial Research Organisation of Australia (1983), and a visiting fellowship from the Japanese Society for Promotion of Science (1996).He is an external collabora-tor with the Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad in Costa Rica; and a Research Associate with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Florida State Collection of Arthropods.For twenty years (1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005) Lubo served on the Board of Directors of the American Entomological Institute.Since 1986 he has served on the Grants Committee of the CanaColl Foundation.He was a prime motivating force in the foundation of the International Society of Hymenopterists and served as its fi rst president (1982).He has been a long-time member of the Entomological Society of Canada and, in recognition of his career accomplishments, the society presented him with its Gold Medal Award in 1999.Th is was followed, in 2005, by his selection as a Fellow by the Entomological Society of America.
Th ese are merely the facts, the external trappings of a career that only imperfectly begin to hint at the content of a life's work.Lubo's research, after an initial dalliance with beetles, has been focused on the systematics of the parasitoid wasps of what was once called the superfamily Proctotrupoidea.Today, we partition those same species into three diff erent superfamilies -the Proctotrupoidea s.str., Platygastroidea, and Ceraphronoidea.His research and contributions have covered the entire spectrum of systematics, from descriptions of new species and genera to higher level analyses of the relationships within and between families.In the course of his career, at least to this point in time, he has described and named 367 new species, 85 new genera, and even three new familygroup taxa, the Ambositrinae, Peradeniidae, and Maamingidae.Just as importantly, he has reviewed and revised the concepts of classical taxonomists and brought them up to the level of modern systematics.His published works (see a complete list below) has included seminal world-level monographs of the Scelionidae (Masner 1976), Platygastridae (Masner and Huggert 1989), and Diapriidae (Masner and García 2002); and a fundamental reclassifi cation of the superfamily Ceraphronoidea (Masner and Dessart 1967).He has studied and reported on the type species and specimens of earlier authors, thus contributing signifi cantly to stabilizing taxonomic nomenclature.
One of the core tenets of Lubo's work with his beloved "proctos" has been the absolutely central role of collections in sound and lasting systematic work.When he arrived in Ottawa at the end of the 1960's he was given responsibility for curation of the proctotrupoid holdings of the Canadian National Collection of Insects, Arachnids and Nematodes, a collection dating back to the pioneer days of W. Hague Harrington at the end of the 19 th Century.Th e sum total of holdings: one-half of a cabinet (15 drawers) of specimens.Surely, curation for this group would be a simple task to accomplish.Collections of microhymenoptera had traditionally been built on the basis of specimens reared from hosts, usually of species of economic importance, with supplemental material collected by hand-sweeping, often from fl owers.A combination of factors including the small size of the wasps (usually < 3 mm in total length), physical diffi culties in preparation of specimens, and the near impossibility to see and net individuals in the fi eld, probably contributed to the small size of the collection.Previous taxonomists had based their work on just such small collections, the most prolifi c of them, men like William H. Ashmead in the United States, l'Abbé Jean-Jacques Kieff er in Europe, and Alan Dodd in Australia, rarely had more than a handful of specimens upon which they based their ideas of the diversity of proctos.All these workers collected to some extent, but the methods available to them were simply not up to the task at hand.
To say that Lubo has a passion for collecting would surely rank as one of the greatest understatements of all time.He is a tireless worker in the fi eld, but this is not limited to endless repetition of the time-honored collecting methods in the same well-known places.Rather, Lubo has constantly been searching for new and better techniques.Th e use of Moericke traps, water-fi lled yellow pans, was known as an effective means to collect aphids.With his discovery that such traps also captured large numbers of microhymenoptera, Lubo opened a window on hymenopteran diversity that had never been imagined.Th e traps have evolved from yellow-painted aluminum baking pans to molded plastic picnic bowls, and are now a routine collecting method.Other innovations include screen-sweeping, a fi ne-meshed sweep net with a wire screen across the mouth to reduce the amount of vegetation and debris entering the net; the photo-eclector and the separation bag (Masner and Gibson 1979) to take advantage of positive phototropism to have the insects separate themselves from the contents of a sweep net; the maxi-net, a very large, fi ne-meshed sweep net to "fi lter" the aerial entomoplankton; as well as innumerable tweaks of Malaise and fl ight-intercept trap design.Lubo initiated long-term collecting with these tools in both his literal and fi gurative backyard in the Ottawa area, particularly in the Gatineau Provincial Park just north of the city in Québec.Beyond Canada, he has collected practically everywhere he has gone in his travels: expeditions that particularly stand out include trips across the breadth of the United States as well as visits to Australia, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Japan.
Not content with the results of his own personal eff orts, Lubo has energetically pursued other travelers and collectors to take a few yellow bowls (at least) along with them on their journeys.Some of the most productive have been the eff orts of his colleagues in Ottawa, particularly Stewart Peck and Henry Howden, but the CNC collection includes contributions from people all over the world.
Th e result has been that the skeletal collection that he inherited in 1969 has been transformed into unquestionably the largest and most diverse collection of proctos anywhere in the world, in this short time dramatically outstripping the holdings of the Smithsonian Institution, the Natural History Museum, or any other collection anywhere.From the initial half-cabinet, the collection now takes up over 30 cabinets.And there has been plenty of "collateral damage," i.e., the rest of the Hymenoptera collection in Ottawa has grown signifi cantly, as have those of other orders of insects.
Th e processing of large bulk samples of insects from mass-trapping can be a long and tedious process.Never content with the status quo, Lubo has also developed and perfected methods to facilitate this task, most notably the use of graduated screen cages to separate samples into large, medium, and small size classes, and, especially, the use of sorting trays.Most budding entomologists sort specimens in alcohol by pouring them into a pan, watch glass, or similar container, then fi ght with the currents and eddies in the liquid to extract the target taxa.Beginning from Petri dishes with beads of bathtub caulk and now at the point of rectangular plastic plates with raised molded ridges that are commercially available, sorting trays have made this work rapid and thorough.And sorting samples is where the diversity of the catch is fi rst appreciated.Proctos are generally far too small to recognize while actively collecting in the fi eld.It is only by examining the samples under a microscope that the results can be seen.As Lubo has described it to me, the rewards of collecting and sorting increase as one's knowledge increases.You are able to recognize which species are common, which are unusual, and which are the true jewels.Sometimes the gems that are uncovered are truly astounding, revealing novelties and absurdities that, literally, no one else in the world has ever seen before.Hence, it is no surprise that when a package arrives in the mail with samples from far-Memorable moments with Lubo Masner. 1.On the road to the Cape of Good Hope.fl ung corners of the world, Lubo gravitates to it like a moth to the fl ame, eager to pore over the specimens to fi nd one that elicits that surge of adrenalin and endorphins as well as an exclamation of "Wau….!" (With a Czech accent, of course.) Th e number of researchers studying proctos has usually been rather small, and this has also been true of parasitic Hymenoptera in general.Th e ratio of the number of specialists to the number of known species, let alone the number of undescribed species, has always been pitifully small.One of the important legacies of Lubo's career has been his eff orts to recruit new students to this fi eld and to more closely integrate them into a collaborative whole.Th is begins with his absolutely contagious enthusiasm for the study of parasitic wasps.One cannot sit and talk about proctos -or any other group of Hymenoptera -without being carried along by his tsunami of excitement and eagerness.Many of us, when visiting the collection in Ottawa, have been invited to stay with him at his house while in town.To the tolerance of his wife, Marcela, and two children, Radek and Monica, we all owe a tremendous debt of gratitude.One can hardly imagine the carousel of entomologists that have passed through their home over the years.During the summer, or even winter for those more intrepid souls, many of us have had the pleasure to be invited to spend time at his beloved cabin.Two hours north of Ottawa, on the shores of Lac Roddick, the cabin was built with his own hands and has served as a venue for mixing passions of entomology, hiking, mushrooming, and fi shing.For young students, Lubo has always been generous with his time, ideas, and specimens.To be sure, even though not all such investments have turned out to be successful, and not all of us have ended up working with proctos or even in systematics at all, but his optimisim and enthusiasm persist unabated.
In the early 1970's Lubo began production of a quasi-annual newsletter entitled Proctos, designed to increase the eff ectiveness of communication within the small circle of those specializing on this group.It's success may be measured by the imitators that soon appeared, including Chalcid News for workers on Chalcidoidea, Symphytos for the sawfl y specialists, and Sphecos for aculeates.Th is trend for increased organization and communication reached its zenith with a meeting of hymenopterists at his house in Ottawa the early 1980's, a meeting that eventually resulted in the foundation of the International Society of Hymenopterists and the publication of the Journal of Hymenoptera Research.
Outside of proctos, Lubo's interests are tremendously varied.A love of the outdoors is one strong element.Th is includes hiking, skiing -both downhill and cross-country, fi shing, mushroom hunting, tennis, gardening, and ice-skating, particularly on the Rideau Canal.He is an enthusiastic barbeque chef, particularly noted for his "garlic pork shoulder butt roast."He learned to play the piano in his youth, and occasionally gives impromptu mini-concerts: I remember two very well, once at the University House in Canberra (to a somewhat surprised wait staff ) and a second on the piano in the lobby of the Hilton in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.At the daily coff ee in the Neatby Building in Ottawa, Lubo holds his own with the raucous group, discussing history, politics, and astronomy, among other areas, and also contributing from his vast repertoire of jokes.How he is able to fi t all of this into a mere 24-hour day is a mystery.Finally, from this prodigal son, I would like to express my own personal appreciation to the man who was initially a teacher and mentor and, over the years, has become an esteemed colleague and friend.All the contributors dedicate this issue of ZooKeys to him with admiration and aff ection, and with wishes for continued good health, productivity, and, most of all, many more exciting discoveries in the next trap catch!

2 .
A genial gettogether after a day in the Natural History Museum, London.Left to right: Norm Johnson, Marcela Masner, Lubo Masner, Andy Polaszek.3. Contemplating the incense in Lukang, Taiwan.4. Th e chef at work at the home parilla in Ottawa.