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Kevin
Holston became interested in robberflies (Diptera:
Asilidae) after conducting ethological studies in Austin,
supervised by Dr. C. Riley Nelson. He then spent several months
as an intern at the Smithsonian
Institution working on developing a morphologically based
classification of Efferia under the direction of Wayne
Mathis and F.
Christian Thompson.
Mr.
Holston is working on the revision of the genus Thereva,
which includes species found in several zoogeographical regions.
He has participated in the Summer 1996 collecting trip to
the Southwestern US, in the Fall 1996
trip to South Africa, and in 1997 trips to Guatemala,
Texas, and California. In 2000,
he traveled to the Canadian National
Collection to look at types of the genus Thereva;
to Washington state and Michigan
to try to collect material for molecular studies in the lab
of Brian Wiegmann at North Carolina State University in the
spring of 2001; to Spain and
Greece in late May/early June;
and to Europe starting in August to collect and visit museums.
He was awarded a grant from the American-Scandinavian
Foundation to conduct Ph.D.-directed research in entomology
at the University of Copenhagen
between October and December 2000.
Kevin
Holston completed the last of the required Entomology courses
in December 1998. He is expanding his background in foreign
languages, specifically German, which will aid in his survey
of taxonomic and systematic literature related to this project.
He
has focused considerable attention on nomenclature challenges
presented by the genus Thereva, by finding and compiling
all species names used in combination with Thereva.
He is working closely with F. C. Thompson (PEET consultant)
and G. E. Kampmeier (PEET collaborator)
to develop the Systematic Database of Thereva Names. Under
the guidance of Thompson, Mr. Holston spent a week in January
1998 going through literature to develop and improve the database
of Thereva names and their associated references. Data
acquisition for this project constituted the major part of
a Masters thesis conferred to Kevin Holston in May 1999. Mr.
Holston has worked extensively with Kampmeier on the NAMES
file of the therevid database system, MANDALA,
to improve its ability to handle nomenclatural concerns. The
database will be published on CD-ROM in The Diptera Data Dissemination
Disk, Vol. 2 of the North American Dipterists Society in 2000.
It includes classification and distribution information relevant
to each name as well as an extensive datafile of all literature
citations.
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