Associate Curator, Insects, Dept. of Zoology, Field Museum

Sc.B., Biology, Brown University, 1973.
Ph.D., Biology, Harvard University, 1985.

• Advisory Panel member, Biotic Surveys and Inventories, Systematics--PEET, Systematics, and Research Collections programs, US National Science Foundation
• Officer, Systematics, Morphology, and Evolution section, Entomological Society of America, 1995-1997 (Chair 1997)
• International and Editorial Boards, Annales Zoologici and Dugesiana
• Past President and Treasurer, Coleopterists Society

Systematics, biology, and evolution of world Staphylinidae/Historical biogeography/Faunistic studies of Staphyliniformia

My research focuses on the systematics, evolution and biogeography of basal elements of the large and ancient beetle family Staphylinidae (rove beetles). Many of these lineages are restricted to either northern or southern temperate areas of the world. A major work in progress on the forty plus genera of the tribe Omaliini will begin to make that worldwide, but mainly temperate, group accessible for phylogenetic and large-scale historical biogeographic studies.

Taxonomically broader fieldwork-based faunistic work on the southern continents is another part of my research program, which will receive increased attention with the start of my PEET grant funding in 2002. The staphyliniform faunas of Australia, New Zealand, Chile and South Africa are highly endemic at the specific level, but strongly interconnected at generic and higher levels. This work, done in collaboration with A. F. Newton, will continue to expand knowledge of the diversity, distribution and biology of the Staphyliniformia of those regions and also, in the long term, knowledge of apparently ancient biogeographic relationships among the regions.

In conjunction with local conservation and habitat restoration efforts, I worked with Chicago-area rove beetles for several years. More information is available on my Chicago Wilderness page. These efforts included field work from 1996-2000, in which over 180 different species of rove beetles were collected in two oak woodland areas in the Palos Hills, southwest of Chicago. At least two of these species were new to science, and I described the widespread one, Xylodromus suteri (shown below) in a 2003 paper on omaliine Staphylinidae occurring in Mexico.

At the microscope ©The Field Museum, GN88809_11c	Xylodromus suteri Thayer, 2003 from Swallow Cliff ©Margaret K. Thayer