Margaret K. Thayer

Margaret Kathryn Thayer (born June 14, 1952 in California ) is an American entomologist .

Life

From 1969 Thayer studied biology at Brown University in Providence , Rhode Island , where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1973 . In 1980 she continued her studies in biology at Harvard University , where she in 1985 with a thesis on revision of the austral genus Metacorneolabium and studies in the systematics and biogeography of omaliine Staphylinidae (Coleoptera) for Ph.D. received his doctorate. From 1980 to 1983 she received a pre-doctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation . From 1976 to 1980 she was assistant curator at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. From 2005 to December 2013 she was the scientific director of the entomological department of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago . She trained undergraduate and postgraduate students in entomology, systematics, and evolution, and was the collection manager responsible for the administration and care of 12 million of the museum's 24 million insect preparations. She has been a retired curator since December 2013 and continues her research work for the museum.

Since Thayer found numerous species of short-winged species in the entomological samples she had sorted , her research has focused on this family. She learned more about this group from her mentor, Alfred Francis Newton of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Thayer studies the subfamily Omaliinae and the global biodiversity of related subfamilies. However, their particular focus is on the distribution of species from the Nearctic or southern temperate regions .

Thayer has contributed to over 22 scientific articles as an author or co-author. These include several for solving nomenclature problems as well as articles on catalogs. She has revised and treated the phylogeny and biogeography of the genus Metacorneolabium , the phylogeny, the habitats and feeding behavior of the genus Neophonus as well as the sexual dimorphism of the short-winged species (Staphylinidae).

Thayer co-authored a catalog of family group names and a higher classification of the Staphylinoidea , a revision of the genus Glypholoma and a description of the subfamily Protopselaphinae , including a discussion of phylogenetic relationships with other subfamilies. She worked on phylogenetic and faunistic studies of various groups with southern distributions, on a revision of the generic classification of the Omaliinae and, in collaboration with others, on a guide to the genera of the raven from Mexico and North America, as well as on a phylogeny of the raven based on morphology and DNA sequence data . As an author or co-author, she first described 35 species and 2 genera by 1998 .

literature

• Aleš Smetana , Lee H. Herman : Brief history of taxonomic studies of the Staphylinidae including biographical sketches of the investigators . In: Catalog of the Staphylinidae (Insecta: Coleoptera). 1758 to the end of the second millennium. I. Introduction, history, biographical sketches, and omaliine group , pp. 149-150

Web links

• Margaret Thayer's profile on LinkedIn
• Profile of Margaret Thayer at the Field Museum of Natural History