Faunistics and Community Ecology:

Ozark Oak Herbivores Project (with R. J. Marquis, J. Le Corff) (Funded by Missouri Department of Conservation and U. S. Forest Service) - This collaborative study, based at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, has been ongoing for ten years. Herbivores, especially caterpillars, have been intensively and quantitatively sampled from five species of Ozark oaks to provide the database for the studies. A series of herbivore and parasitoid community ecology papers documenting seasonal, geographic and year-to-year variation has emerged from this project, some of which have involved our lab in the parasitoid work especially. A major publication still in production from this work is an illustrated field guide to the caterpillars of Ozark oaks (Marquis, Passoa, Whitfield, Le Corff and Lill, in press).

Rearing Survey of Lepidoptera and their Parasitoids in Guanacaste, Costa Rica (D. H. Janzen, W. Hallwachs, funded by National Science Foundation) - The microgastrinae and cardiochiline braconid wasps from Janzen and Hallwachs' massive rearing survey of Lepidoptera in Guanacaste, Costa Rica are all being sorted and studied in our lab - many of the specimens serve in our revisionary studies (above) as well as in molecular phylogenetic work, in addition to their functions in the Guanacaste project.

Caterpillars and Parasitoids of the Eastern Andes in Ecuador (with J. Stireman, L. Dyer, P. DeVries, and others; funded by Earthwatch Institute and NSF) - The microgastrinae and cardiochiline braconid wasps from this project are all being sorted and studied in our lab - many of the specimens also serve in our revisionary studies as well as in molecular phylogenetic work, in addition to their functions in documenting the biodiversity of Ecuador's Hymenoptera (click here for pictures of Ecuador) .