Andrew B T Smith

Visiting from:

Canadian Museum of Nature
Working with: Malcolm Kerley, Curator of Scarabaeoidea, and Max Barclay, Coleoptera Collections Manager; Matt Paulsen Arrived at the Museum: 15th August 2011
Leaving date: 31st August 2011 

Andrew, Max and Matt Paulsen

Andrew identified thousands of specimens of Melolonthinae and Rutelinae from the Museum's accessions of undetermined material in the two weeks that he spent in the Coleoptera section.  25 drawers of New World Melolonthinae were identified and incorporated into the main collection. Parts of the collection were reorganised to  reflect modern classification schemes and over 50 specimens collected by Charles Darwin in southern South America  during the voyage of the Beagle were located and databased!  Many of the Darwin specimens had no  explicit information on the labels linking them to Darwin so there was much detective work involved as well! This was all achieved on a collections enhancement grant.

Platycoelia convexa Smith, 2003

Research interests:

Andrew is a Research Associate of the Canadian Museum of Nature. His research interests include the systematics, molecular phylogenetics, biogeography, and conservation of scarab beetles. Andrew has recently completed revisions of all of the Neotropical Anoplognathini (Rutelinae). 
Here is an excellent website giving detailed information about the Scarab workers of the world:

http://www.unl.edu/museum/research/entomology/workers/index2.htm

Relevant publications:

Smith, A. B. T. 2009. Description of a new species of Platycoelia Dejean (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Rutelinae: Anoplognathini) from Bolivia. Zootaxa 2105: 66-68.

Bouchard, P., V. V. Grebennikov, A. B. T. Smith, and H. Douglas. 2009. Biodiversity of Coleoptera. In, R. G. Foottit and P. H. Adler (eds.), Insect Biodiversity: Science and Society. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford.

Smith, A. B. T. 2008. South American Melolonthinae (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) classification and nomenclature: some problems and solutions. Insecta Mundi 60: 1-28.