Amateur but passionate entomologist, especially enthusiastic about lady beetles. (Or the common name of your choice: "you say ladybug, I say ladybird, let's call the whole thing Coccinellidae"...)

Coccinellidae, first and foremost.

Lepidoptera - Butterflies, moths, and caterpillars are so charismatic, and I can thank Papilio polyxenes for turning me on to the amazing variety of wildlife in urban Philadelphia.

Aphididae - Mostly because lady beetles eat them, but as I've tried to identify the latest lady beetle chow, I've become interested in the huge variety of color, shape, size, developmental history, and foodplants of these little leaf-suckers.

Birdwatching - it's my big hobby in spring, before the outdoor bugs really get going. You also can't tear me from my binoculars during the fall migration. Well, unless there's a really cool coccinellid nearby...and when woollybears started falling on my head as I looked for dickcissels in October, I did pause to put them back in the woods.

No long-term pets, but there are hibernating woollybears in the fridge and various moth pupae stashed around the basement windows where it's cold. In the warm months, I've always got tanks and bottles and jars and boxes of caterpillars, lady beetles, mantids, syrphid flies, aphids to feed the beetles and mantids and syrphids...

If an insect is injured or otherwise can't fend for itself outdoors, I keep it in captivity for its natural lifespan. It's usually because of a bad eclosion - butterflies with crumpled wings or lady beetles with misshapen elytra. I fed a crippled mantis ground beef from the palm of my hand, and was sad when he died!

Check out my lady beetle life cycles on BugGuide: daily photographs of a single individual from egg to adult.

Coleomegilla maculata, (Pink) Spotted Lady Beetle.

Propylea quatourdecimpunctata, Fourteen-spotted Lady Beetle.

Harmonia axyridis, Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle.

Coccinella novemnotata, the vanishing Nine-spotted Lady Beetle. (Me and every other coccinellidologist in North America!)

Psyllobora nana, a tiny lady beetle from the Florida Keys.

Any of the lycaenid butterflies (blues) that Vladimir Nabokov studied.

Ailanthus silkmoth (I forget if it's Cynthia samia or Samia cynthia) collected from the wild in North America.

In spring, I want live Cryptolaemus montrouzieri, in order to photograph the larvae at each stage of development.

Electronic publishing, so I'm good with books and computers. I used to be a copyeditor but it was harder to work with authors than with Perl scripts!

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