Biologist David Lohman leads $2.5 million NSF-funded study on butterfly evolution

Dr. David J. Lohman, assistant professor of biology at The City College of New York, and his colleagues received $2.5 million in grants from the National Science Foundation for a collaborative study to resolve the evolutionary history of all butterfly species. Entitled “ButterflyNet—an integrative framework for comparative biology,” the support is part of $12.3 million in NSF Genealogy of Life awards announced last week.
 
Lohman will lead a group of scientists from Georgetown University, Harvard University, the University of Florida and Yale University in the project.
 
According to Lohman, butterflies are the best studied of all insects in terms of their morphology, species distributions, behavior, and larval resources. What has not been done is to synthesize this scattered information and place it in an evolutionary context to study broad-scale patterns of ecology and evolution in the group.
 
“This project will achieve these goals by reconstructing the evolutionary history of the approximately 18,800 described species and assembling a database of biological information about each species using field guides, citizen science, museum collections, and other sources,” he said.
 
All of this information will be made available to the public via a website and other web servers aimed at catalyzing synthetic research and comparative studies. 
 
In addition to public outreach and education, Lohman and his team will train graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in systematics and bioinformatics. 
 
City College, which will receive nearly $1 million of the grant, will train one postdoctoral research scientist and one graduate student.
 
About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided low-cost, high-quality education for New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. More than 16,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in: the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture; the School of Education; the Grove School of Engineering; the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, and the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership. U.S. News, Princeton Review and Forbes all rank City College among the best colleges and universities in the United States.
 

MEDIA CONTACT

Jay Mwamba
p: 212.650.7580
e: jmwamba@ccny.cuny.edu