Roberta Engel
Doctoral Student
Office: BioPharm 318
Voice: (860) 486-6215
Fax: (860) 486-6364
E-mail: roberta.engel@uconn.edu
Mailing address:
75 N. Eagleville Road, Unit 3043
Storrs, CT 06269-3043, U.S.A.
Contents
EEB 4251 Medical Entomology
Medical Entomology in the News
Class Announcements
Lab
Lab 1, 1/21/09
Contact Info
email: roberta.engel at uconn.edu lab phone: 486-6215
Office Hours
Wednesday 2-3, in TLS 313; also by appointment in BioPharm 318
Fenton Findings
Opportunities in the Sciences
CAES see posting on bulletin board in TLS313
Research Interests
Pseudoscorpions, also known as Chelonethida, Pseudoscorpiones, or Pseudoscorpionida, are an understudied order of arachnids. But while not well known, Aristotle made note of pseudoscorpions as did the luminaries Linnaeus and Hooke (Micrographia 1665), and today they star on YouTube. Pseudoscorpions are found throughout the world in a wide range of microhabitats including leaf litter, animal nests, under rocks (even in the intertidal zone), beneath bark, and among the pages of books. One reason many are unfamiliar with pseudoscorpions is their diminutive size, most measuring less than 5 mm. This ancient lineage, a fossil dates to the Middle Devonian, comprises 25 families, 439 genera, and 3385 species. Synsphyronus (Arachnida: Pseudoscorpiones: Garypidae) is a genus of pseudoscorpions found throughout Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia (Harvey 1987). Currently there are 24 described species but unpublished data suggests that the diversity of this genus exceeds this number.