Research

Our research is broad in scope but generally falls into one or more of four main categories:

  1. Insect Systematics - Several projects focus on revising species and higher-level taxa, uncovering the evolutionary history of of Insecta, identifying specimens, and developing tools that enable others to determine their specimens.
  2. Biodiversity Informatics - Our databasing efforts (specimen data, ontologies) aim to improve the science of biodiversity information - i.e., how we communicate, store, transmit, and avail biodiversity data.
  3. North Carolina's Biodiversity - By combining the latest biodiversity informatics with our constant efforts to identify North Carolina's fauna we hope to reveal patterns in North Carolina's insect fauna across space and time.
  4. The Science of Curation - One of our primary missions is to preserve insect specimens (including vouchers and types) for posterity and to organize them in a way that maximizes information retrieval. We are actively involved in exploring methods that enable efficient research.