Merope tuber Newman (Mecoptera: Meropeidae) is a rare North American species of earwigfly, which is closely related to common scorpionflies. “Earwigfly” refers to three different species: the Western Australian Austromerope poulton, the South American Austromerope brasiliensis, and finally, the Eastern North American Merope tuber. This last species was the focus of our study. Johnson’s 1995 study was based on 160 earwigflies, where he measured the female abdomen length, male and female forewing length, and male basistylus and dististylus length. In their 2014 study, based on 82 earwigflies, Skvarla, Hartshorn, and Dowling measured head width, pronotum width, forewing length, abdomen length, basistylus length, and dististylus length. In our study of 504 earwigflies, we are measuring head width, pronotum length, pronotum width, pterothorax length, abdomen length, forewing length, basistylus length, and diststylus length. This project was started in February, at this point we have measured about 2/5 of the specimens. This collection of 504 earwigflies is most likely the largest collection of any earwigflies in the world, and provided an excellent dataset for a comprehensive morphometric analysis. We plan to incorporate morphometrics to our measurements and seek to corroborate our results with previous findings.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/celebration_posters_2022/1007/thumbnail.jp
