Congratulations to Ann Stocker | fungus gnat species named

Image credit: Zootaxa

Congratulations to Ann for being recognised for her extensive contributions to our understanding of Australian flies. A species of Victorian fungus gnat (Diptera: Sciaridae) has been formally described and named Austrosciara stockerae. You can read about the taxonomic details in a recent Zootaxa article here.

The dedication blurb

A bit about Ann from her profile;

Ann Stocker, Honorary Research Fellow

I received my PhD many years ago at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School with a Drosophila evolutionary geneticist, Costas Kastritsis who had studied inversion polymorphisms with T. Dobzhansky. I then did a post doc at the University of Texas, Austin, studying ecdysone and chromosome activity in Rhynchosciara, particularly in relation to gene amplification. My supervisor was the Brazilian geneticist, Crodowaldo Pavan. After that I came to Melbourne and worked for several years in the Melbourne University Genetics Department at the end of the time of Michael White’s tenure there. I made the mistake of trying to raise Rhynchosciara in Australia since I was very familiar with that fly and I felt that there was a lot of work still to be done. That attempt was not successful. Subsequently, I had a long period at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil working with Professor Francisco Lara. I have been in and out of Brazil for many years through various political changes and still visit there. During some of that period I was a lecturer for about 8 years at the College of Advanced Education which became the Department of Education of the University of Melbourne. I began to work with Ary when I came back from a long period in Brazil and he was still at La Trobe University. I could have retired but I decided to work a little longer. My first project involved clines in inversion polymorphism. I have been associated with Ary’s group ever since, working casually on various projects and most recently in an honorary position. My speciality is chromosomes, particularly fly chromosomes, which most people do not work with any more.

Current Project

Chromosome evolution in Australian Scaptodrosophila: I have examined mitotic chromosomes of a number of Australian Scaptodrosophila species and carried out C-banding and Ag-NOR banding. I have also examined polytene chromosomes. Since Ag-NOR banding was only variably successful, I may also do rDNA in situ hybridization when I am in Brazil. I intend to put together my results in a manuscript showing the relationship among the species

Publications (recent)