California Beetle Project > Personnel
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PERSONNEL
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P.I. - Dr. Michael Caterino.
Mike runs the show, conducts much of the fieldwork, and takes care of the
business end of the project. He hopes someday to have seen
every California beetle species in its native environment.
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Postdoc - Dr. Stylianos Chatzimanolis.
Stelios joined the project in November of 2005. His background is in staphylinid
systematics, which is a major asset to the project. In addition to fieldwork and
identification, his major job is conducting the
comparative phylogeographic study of several species of beetles in the region.
more on Stelios's research and background
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Postdoc - Dr. Andrew Short.
During his time with the California Beetle Project, Andrew Short is working on the comparative phylogeography of aquatic beetles in southern California.
more on Andrew's research and background
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Curatorial Assistant - Chris Martin.
Chris recently obtained his biology degree from UCSB. He joined the project in June, 2006, and has been involved in specimen preparation, photography, and has recently learned molecular techniques.
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Curatorial Assistant - Rachel Weber.
Rachel recently graduated from UC Davis. She helps with specimen preparation, and is primarily responsible for imaging for species pages.
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VOLUNTEERS - This project also relies on dedicated volunteers, who donate their valuable time:
Ben Hitz. Ben is our premier literature record extractor. He has spent many hours poring over old journals for any California beetle records. He has already done Pan-Pacific Entomologist, Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington, and Coleopterists Bulletin, as well as many non-serial monographs. Through his work we have added over 20,000 published records to the project database, and the bibliography also owes much to his efforts.
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PROJECT ALUMNI
This project's many upwardly mobile students have a way of moving on too quickly. We thank many who have helped in the past.
 Imaging specialist - Daniel Johnson. Daniel Johnson is back at USC film school, after helping to image many beautiful beetles. See the species pages for examples of his work.
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 Data Entry specialist - Jackie Scott.
Jackie is an undergraduate at Westmont College. She is becoming a veteran with the project, and assists with everything from databasing (her primary responsibility) to specimen preparation and species page writing.
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 Curatorial Assistant - Marina Herrera
Marina first worked with the project as a summer 'Quasar' (see below), and continued for two years afterward assisting with capturing literature data for the project database. Her Quasar project built species pages for some conspicuous local blister beetles (Meloidae - sample Lytta species page). She has now left to attend Dominican University in the Bay Area.
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DNA lab and curatorial assistant - Gretchen Betzholtz.
Gretchen recently graduated from Santa Barbara High School. She joined the project in the fall of 2006, and assisted with molecular work, specimen preparation and literature record capture.
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Curatorial Assistant - Natalie Rossington.
Natalie worked as a volunteer, and then paid assistant with the project, helping with specimen preparation, and especially with specimen photography. Many of her shots are on view on our species pages.
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Curatorial Assistant - Sinead Borchert.
Sinead is a biology major at UCSB. She worked with the project during the summer of 2007, as an exceptional specimen preparator.
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Science writer - Maren Farnum.
Maren worked on text for many of our species pages.
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QUASARS TO SEASTARS, 2007. The 2007 Quasar class included two high school students, Nathaniel Block and Karla Lara. They specialized in Scarabaeidae and Histeridae, respectively, and contributed photographs and text for several species pages, as well as DNA sequences for our phylogenetic projects. Below we prepare to depart Santa Cruz Island, with supervisors Chatzimanolis and Caterino (right center and far right).
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QUASARS TO SEASTARS, 2006. The 2006 Quasar class included three high school students, each learning to recognize and identify members of important California beetle families. Their work resulted in a number of new species pages for tenebrionid, hydrophilid, and staphylinid beetles. The participants included (left to right, below) Zoe Walp, Erika Bildsten, and Rameen Zarrinnaal.
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QUASARS TO SEASTARS, 2005
Four high school students worked with the project during the summer of 2005 to help sort, identify, photograph and write species pages for some attractive local beetle genera. These students (and their respective taxa) are:
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 Beatriz Alvarez
(Carabidae: Lebia).
(sample Lebia species page)
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 Vanessa Gamero
(Chrysomelidae: Cryptocephalus).
(sample Cryptocephalus species page)
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 David Honsberger
(Carabidae: Brachinus).
(Brachinus species page)
(More on the Quasars to Sea Stars Program)
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