Research
My students design their own research topics or focus, in consultation with myself and a supervisory committee. Honours BSc and MSc topics are usually located in the Ottawa area or in eastern Canada, and PhD topics may have a wider geographic scope. Interested students should contact me with their research plans and interests. The Ottawa area offers my students superb strengths for their research, using the Government biosystematic collections, government library resources, and professional contact with the arthropod scientists at Agriculture Canada and the Canadian Museum of Nature. Past students have written theses or dissertations on a diverse set of topics in the taxonomy, evolution, ecology or biogeography of various arthropods including the following.
- The biosystematics and higher phyogenetic classificaton of Pyralid moths.
- The biosystematics and higher phylogenetic classification of Empidid flies.
- Life cycle and ecological impact of the introduced Polistes versicolor wasps in the Galapagos Islands.
- Island biogeography determinants of species diversity in the insect species in the Hawaiian and Galapagos archipelagos.
- Dead-wood feeding beetles: species diversity and forest structure in managed and naturally disturbed spruce forests in Nova Scotia.
- The overwintering biology of the European introduced earwig Forficula auricularia Linnaeus (Insecta: Dermaptera).
- The ecology and reproductive biology of the carrion beetle assemblage in the Mer Bleue Bog area of Ontario.
- The biology and distribution of the Silphidae and Agyrtidae of Canada and Alaska (Insecta: Coleoptera).
- A taxonomic revision of the Nearctic species of Himerta Foerster (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae).
- Darwin’s Darkling Beetles: Allozymes and evolution of the genus Stomion (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) in the Galapagos Island
- A phylogenetic analysis of the higher classification of Elaterid beetles.
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