Sarcophagidae, commonly known as the flesh flies, comprises one of the more behaviorally diverse families among the insects. In addition to carrion feeding, sarcophagids have evolved life history strategies that include predation, parasitism, and kleptoparasitism. Most kleptopar…
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Ethiopia is a country rich in termite diversity, yet little is known about the taxonomy of the Ethiopian termite species and their populations genetic structure. This study explores the diversity of Ethiopian termite species using barcoding and phylogenetic analyses of thirty-si…
Epigeal predatory arthropods were collected with pitfall-style traps in nine sandstone glades of varying ecological stages, and management histories, in the Ozarks of Northern Arkansas over three years. These sites were categorized into three Site Types; Intact, high quality gla…
Climatic gradients result in life-history tradeoffs across diverse taxa. Studying range-expanding invasive species can offer insight to environmental conditions that drive adaptive responses. Insects, which have rapid generations and high fecundity, can adapt rapidly to novel or…
Supergenes are chromosomal regions of tightly linked loci experiencing reduced recombination that are inherited as a single unit when heterozygous. Polygenic morphological or behavioral traits can be maintained as distinct morphs, polymorphisms, within a population due to altern…
Pace-of-Life Syndrome (PoLS) links physiology, behavior, and life history to understand how an organism lives and is under-researched in many invertebrate groups. In this study I used five tarantula species to assess if they follow the predictions of PoLS. I compared individual …
The balsam woolly adelgid (BWA) is a tiny, piercing-sucking insect that was introduced into North America around 1900 and into the Southern Appalachians in the 1950s. It is a major pest in natural Fraser fir stands and Christmas tree plantations. It has caused extensive mortalit…
Japanese Encephalitis (JE) is a mosquito-borne viral disease responsible for 30,000 to 50,000 reported cases and up to 15,000 reported deaths every year. The disease is a significant public health concern in Bangladesh, but there is no regular surveillance or immunization for JE…
Survival and development of Aedes triseriatus, the mosquito vector of La Crosse Encephalitis, were found to be inhibited in the presence of dried leaves of certain populations of the sugar maple Acer saccharum . It is suspected that these effects are due to fungal contaminants c…
Managed honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) populations have steadily declined in the Unites States over the last 60 years (NRC 2006). An estimated 35% of the western human diet benefits from honey bee pollination (Klein et al., 2007). Previous work on honey bee disease tends to conce…
The accurate estimation of the postmortem interval (PMI) is one of the most important determinations in a forensic investigation of decomposing human remains. Forensic entomology has gained popularity in death investigation due to its reliability and precision in the estimation …
The current dissertation project integrates revisionary taxonomy, comparative morphology, molecular phylogenetics and comparative evolutionary analyses to investigate the diversity and evolution of assassin bugs, focusing on the Malagasy Bekilya group (Peiratinae) and the New Wo…
The ambermarked birch leafminer (AMBLM) (Profenusa thomsoni) is an invasive leafminer native to the Palearctic from the United Kingdom to Turkey to Japan. It was introduced to the eastern United States in 1921 and has since spread to the mid-western U.S. states and Canadian prov…
The Nearctic bark beetle genus Scolytus was revised based in part on a molecular phylogeny. Monophyly of the native species was tested using mitochondrial (COI) and nuclear (28S, CAD, ArgK) genes and 43 morphological characters in parsimony and Bayesian phylogenetic analyses. Pa…
The Moroccan locust (Dociostaurus maroccanus) is a recognized pest in Central Asia, and annually inflicts widespread damage in pastoral areas. D. maroccanus females tend to strongly aggregate during egg-laying, which means that their mass oviposition sites constitute the outbrea…
Platygastroidea is a cosmopolitan superfamily of parasitoid wasps. Species level diversity within many platygastroid genera is an order of magnitude greater than has been described. Three genera of platygastroids are revised that, as far as is known, parasitize the eggs of ortho…
Drosophila Groucho (Gro) is the founding member of a conserved metazoan family of global corepressors, with orthologs in worms and vertebrates including humans. Related corepressors are also found in fungi and plants. Gro family members are characterized by conserved N- and C-te…
The Deltocephalus-like leafhoppers are one of the 4 groups in Oman's tribe Deltocephalini. The classification and phylogeny is unclear because only one synapomorphy, a linear connective fused with the aedeagus, has been used to establish the monophyly of the group morphologicall…
Omnivory--defined as feeding on more than one trophic level-is usually treated as a curiosity by ecologists. Here I use field experiments and quantitative techniques to attack a variety of ecological issues associated with omnivory, encompassing dynamics and movement patterns at…