Hilary Hill

Hilary Hill began her research assistantship and Master's of Science program in the Entomology Department at North Carolina State University in the fall of 2000. She has just completed her B. S. degree in Biology from Towson University (Baltimore, Maryland) in August of 2000.

While attending Towson University, Hilary became interested in entomology through taking a general entomology course, and then subsequently doing research with Dr. Aubrey Scarbrough . His major research interests are the behavior, ecology and systematics of asilid flies in the New World. During her research with Dr. Scarbrough, Hilary became familiar with the family, and learned quite a bit about the processes involved with systematics and morphological studies.

In the summer of 1999, Hilary spent 10 weeks in the NSF funded Summer Undergraduate Research in Biology Program at Towson University. Her previous research involved re-describing and further clarifying previously described species, describing new species, and constructing keys of asilids from the Oriental-Oceanic region (on loan from the Smithsonian Institution). The research resulted in 2 papers: "Ommatine robberflies (Diptera: Asilidae) from Sri Lanka." Oriental Insects. 34: 341-407 and "The insula species group of the genus Merodontina Enderlein (Diptera: Asilidae)." Studia Dipterologica (In Press)

Hilary's Master's research focuses on the molecular evolution of opsin genes in Therevidae. Her research aims to elucidate the potential for opsin as a marker for phylogenetic studies of higher therevines. Hilary's interests also include comparisons of the morphological and molecular data in therevids and taxonomy of New World therevid genera.