I am primarily interested in armored scale insects (Hemiptera: Diaspididae). My lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is devoted to the study of their systematics and evolution using DNA and morphology. My general view is that most scale insects cannot be identified to species without being mounted on a microscope slide, but there are several conspicuous exceptions to this generalization, and I'm hopeful that more species will become reliably identifiable with time.

I am currently working with @pshubin to ground-truth iNaturalist scale insect ID's. She is taking habitus photos and then slide-mounting the specimens in my lab, following the lead of @erincpow and @gillessanmartin .

I am also an all-around nature nerd and may try to put names on other things.

Currently, my main contribution to iNaturalist is as an identifier. My own iNaturalist content consists entirely of things that are easy to photograph, namely plants.

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