Editorial board

Editor-in-Chief

Andrew Polaszek - Natural History Museum, London, UK

Andrew is currently a Researcher in Entomology at NHM, and former Head of Department. He has published more than 200 scientific papers, including 2 books (as editor), and has received major research grants from the Netherlands, UK and USA governments. The main priority of his research is the systematics and biology of “Microhymenoptera”, especially those of economic importance. More recently, molecular characterisation of new species has become an integral part of these studies, including the use of these markers to elucidate phylogenies. Much of his work has been collaborative and of an applied nature, with successful classical biological control projects, and input into the development of integrated pest management programmes, especially in the tropics. He is committed to public outreach, science education, and the facilitation of descriptive taxonomy using modern techniques. A current priority is the use of high-quality images to inform society at all levels about the importance of parasitoids and other wasps, as well as bees and ants, as ecosystem service providers.

Associate Editors

Anna Phillips - National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, USA

Anna is a Research Zoologist and curator of clitellate annelids and parasitic worms at the NMNH. Her research focuses on alpha-taxonomy, systematics, evolutionary history, and host associations of parasitic worms, particularly leeches and tapeworms. She has curatorial responsibility for the US National Parasite Collection.

Jann Vendetti - Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, USA

Jann is the Twila Bratcher Chair in Malacological Research at NHMLA. Jann studies land and sea snails and their phylogenetic relationships and systematics. She oversees NHMLA's Snails and slugs Living in Metropolitan Environments (SLIME) citizen science initiative and was a founding member of the Museum's Urban Nature Research Institute in 2016. Along with a staff of collections managers, Jann supervises NHMLA's malacology collection of nearly 5 million specimens and its invertebrate paleontological collection of 7-9 million specimens. She is an advisor to the Nature Conservancy’s Biodiversity Analysis in Los Angeles (BAILA) project and served as the president of the Western Society of Malacologists in 2017.

Bill Ludt - Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, USA

Bill is the Assistant Curator of Ichthyology at the NHMLA. His research aims to determine the factors that have influenced the biodiversity of fishes on our planet. Specifically, Bill’s research applies principles from systematics, molecular phylogenomics, phylogeography and biogeography to understand how geology and climate have interacted and influenced the distribution and diversity of both marine and freshwater fishes. At the NHMLA he oversees the Robert J. Lavenberg ichthyology collection, which contains over three million specimens from all over the world.

J. Antonio Baeza - Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Clemson University, South Carolina, USA

In my laboratory, we are interested in various topics in the fields of Evolutionary Biology, Molecular Phylogenetics & Phylogeography, and Fisheries Biology. I use marine invertebrates, some of them economically valuable, as model systems. My research is both hypothesis and curiosity driven and I use a combination of molecular phylogenies, natural history observations, basic modeling approaches, and manipulative experiments to accomplish my research goals. Currently, my research programs have three main foci (1) biodiversity discovery and diversification, (2) evolutionary biology: adaptive value of mating systems and sex allocation (3) conservation and sustainable management of exploited resources. The model systems we use include various groups of marine crustaceans, including crabs, shrimps, and spiny lobsters.

Alessandro Catenazzi -  Associate Professor, Florida International University in Miami, USA

Alessandro Canetazzi is Associate Professor at Florida International University in Miami, USA, and a Research Associate of the Centro de Ornitologia y Biodiversidad (CORBIDI) and the Instituto Peruano de Herpetologia in Lima, Peru. His research interests are the systematics, natural history and conservation of Neotropical amphibians and reptiles and the ecological dimensions of biodiversity. For the first line of research, he works primarily in the Andes and the Amazon. He collaborates with colleagues in museums and other research institutions in describing new species and developing phylogenies of frogs from the mega-diverse eastern slopes of the Andes. He is interested in using phylogenies as a road map to compare physiological and functional traits among species. He is also studying thermal preferences, tolerance to heat, and the influence of temperature on physiological functions, to understand how climate warming will affect these animals. Finally, a major theme of his current research is exploring fungal disease's effects on amphibians' ecology, a group experiencing staggering biodiversity losses worldwide. After documenting the collapse of a species-rich amphibian assemblage, he is interested in developing strategies to mitigate the impact of the fungal disease chytridiomycosis on surviving species. 

Editorial Board

Acari: Anne Baker (Scientific Associate, Dept of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, London)

Amphibia and Reptilia: Jeff Streicher (Senior Curator, Natural History Museum, London, UK) and Jonathan Fong (Assistant Professor, Lingnan University, Hong Kong)

Annelida/Nematodes: Anya Schulze (Associate Professor, Texas A&M University Galveston Campus, USA)

Aves: Alison Beresford (Conservation Scientist, RSPB, UK)

Bryozoa: Judith Winston (Curator of Marine Biology, Virginia Museum of National History, USA)

Cephalopoda : Louise Allcock (Zoology Lecturer, NUI Galway, Ireland)

Coleoptera: Caroline Chaboo (Insect Research and Conservation Institute, University of Kansas, USA)

Crustacea: Darren Yeo Chong Jinn (Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore)

Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Mostafa Sharaf (Associate Professor, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia)

Lepidoptera: Scott Miller (Curator, Smithsonian, Washington DC)

Mammalia: Roberto Portela Miguez (Senior Curator, Natural History Museum London, UK)

Marine biodiversity: Julia Sigwart (Research Sabbatical, University of California Berkley, USA)

Marine invertebrates: Martin Thiel (Principal Investigator, Universidad Catolica del Norte, Chile)

Polychaeta, Nemertea, Porifera: Sergio Taboada Moreno (Department of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid, Spain)

Porifera: Ana Riesgo Gil (Department of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid, Spain)