Heteroptera or True Bugs comprise about 40,000 species in 86 families and are one of the largest groups of non-holometabolous insects. They show tremendous morphological and biological diversity, but – as other groups of non-holometabolous insect – have attracted the attention of a relatively small number of researchers. True Bugs are found in terrestrial, aquatic, and even marine habitats and their feeding preferences cover the entire range from phytophagous, to zoophagous, and hematophagous, involving monophagy, mixed feeding, and parasitism.
Our lab at the University of California Riverside (UCR) focuses on systematic research in the two largest family-rank taxa within Heteroptera, the Reduviidae or assassin bugs and the Miridae or plant bugs, and other true bugs.
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* Current News from the Bug Lab*
May 2013 Eric and Michael attended the Biological Specimen Informatics Short Course at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. They also used their visit to work on the Reduviidae within the collection.
May 2013 Michael was awarded the UCR Dissertation Research Grant and Outstanding Teaching Assistant award.
Apr-May 2013 Christiane, Michael, and Jason (Hymenoptera Systematics Lab) went on a collecting trip to Honduras for 18 days to collect Reduviidae, Dipsocoromorpha, and parasitic Hymenoptera.
March 2013 Eric received an honorable mention from the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
Dec 2012 Wei Song and Guanyang defended their dissertation research and successfully received their Doctorate. Michael passed his qualifying exams and advanced to Ph.D. Candidate. Great job guys!
Nov 2012 Christiane, Eric, and Michael attended and presented their research at the 60th Annual Entomological Society of America Meeting in Knoxville, TN.
Sep 2012 Wei Song (PhD student) and Christiane published a paper on the evolutionary history of assassin bugs in PloS ONE. Read the UCR press release here.
Aug 2012 Christiane and Michael attend the International Congress of Entomology in South Korea and spent a week collecting bugs (and trying to avoid 2 typhoons that hit South Korea during that time).
Jul 2012 Graduate student Guanyang Zhang won a van den Bosch Scholarship in Biological Control (for the category systematics of natural enemies).
Jun 2012 Graduate student Guanyang Zhang won the Don Rosen Award at the 31st Willi Hennig Society meeting for his poster presentation.
Jun 2012 Incoming graduate student Eric Gordon joins the Heteroptera Lab.
Jun 2012 The Heteropteran and Hymenopteran labs organized and attended the 31st Willi Hennig Society meeting at Riverside.
Apr 2012 Michael Forthman (PhD student) and Christiane published a paper on the predatory behaviors of the millipede assassin bugs (Ectrichodiinae) in the European Journal of Entomology.
Dec 2011 Christiane did fieldwork in Peru.