| J.O. WESTWOOD MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN INSECT TAXONOMY - in partnership with the Natural History Museum | |
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| Award Criteria | The best comprehensive taxonomic work on a group of Insects, or, related Arthropods (including terrestrial and freshwater Hexapods, Myriapods, Arachnids and their relatives). Typically, this will be a taxonomic revision or monograph. Award origin |
| Prize | A specially struck silver gilt medal inscribed with the winners name. Also costs incurred in attending the International Congress of Entomology, European Congress of Entomology, or other major meeting (specified by the Adjudicators to present his/her work. |
| Eligibility | Any individual whose work meets the criteria and who is living at the time the work is submitted for consideration. |
| Cycle | Biennial, entries accepted up to 30th March in the year preceding the awarding year. Entries for 2012 opened on 1st April 2009 and will close by 30 March 2011. |
| Adjudication | By a selection panel consisting of, senior RES Fellows, senior personnel from Entomology Department of the Natural History Museum and acting on the advice of a nominated group of expert international taxonomists. |
| Entry | By nominating letter, accompanied by two letters of support and three copies of the work, sent to, Westwood Medal, Dept of Entomology, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD, UK, or electronically to westwood@nhm.ac.uk. |
| A NEW AWARD FOR INSECT TAXONOMY – J O WESTWOOD MEDAL | ||
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Dr Art Borkent is awarded the second J.O. Westwood Medal for excellence in insect taxonomy for his The Royal Entomological Society and the Entomology Department of the Natural History Museum are pleased to announce that the winner of the second J.O. Westwood Medal is Dr Art Borkent, for his magnificent monograph on The Frog-Biting Midges of the World (Corethrellidae: Diptera). The work was published in 2008 in Zootaxa 1804, 456 pp. (Magnolia Press) and is available online at: http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2008/f/z01804p456f.pdf and as a printed version. Dr Borkent is a research associate with the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, U.S.A. and the Instituto de Biodiversidad in Costa Rica. He has been working independently since 1989. The Introduction to his monograph gives a flavour of how natural history infuses this essentially taxonomic work: On the evening of March 1, 2004, my wife Annette and I were standing on a boardwalk crossing a shallow swamp at La Selva Biological Station in northeastern Costa Rica. We shone our headlamps over the water and vegetation, observing a variety of insect taxa flying about. Then, with a flick of the hand, I turned on a cassette recorder that broadcast the call of the Barking Tree-frog Hyla gratiosa Le Conte over the surrounding area. Immediately, like newly awakened phantoms, over a hundred female Corethrella Coquillett slowly rose up from their resting places amongst the emergent vegetation and began their flight to the speaker that was imitating their potential host. What awaited them was not a bloodmeal from which to develop their eggs, but a suction trap that would capture them for later study. Amazingly, that evening, in the space of 2 hours, we collected over 1200 specimens representing 12 species of Corethrella. Art Borkent’s study received great praise from the distinguished international panel of assessors:
Art Borkent provides the reader with a compilation of all that is known of the frog-biting midges. Of the 97 extant species recognised, 52 of them are new. The study includes also a study of fossil material. Adult female midges are attracted to the calls of male frogs and feed on their blood. Dr Borkent’s study suggests that the association between midges and frogs extends back at least to the early Cretaceous. The monograph provides the reader with a rich source of information on the taxonomy, phylogeny and fascinating biology of these little-known insects.
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Dr Marianne Horak was awarded the first J.O. Westwood Medal for excellence in insect taxonomy for her
Olethreutine Moths of Australia
The Royal Entomological Society and the Entomology Department of the Natural History Museum are pleased to announce that the winner of the first J.O. Westwood Medal is Dr Marianne Horak, Curator of Lepidoptera at the Australian National Insect Collection in Canberra. She receives the award for her outstanding monograph entitled The Olethreutine Moths of Australia (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), which is volume 10 of the landmark series Monographs on Australian Lepidoptera (CSIRO Publishing). The work benefited from contributions from Dr Furumi Komai. Dr Horak’s 522 page opus received plaudits from the distinguished international selection panel:
- … a massive undertaking and meritorious achievement.
- A monumental work… I would have no hesitation in recommending this work to students as a model of what a contemporary monograph should be: a high level of scholarship is evident throughout the work and the quality of every component of the monograph is absolutely exemplary.”
- If I were a young lepidopterist, I don’t think I could ask for a better platform from which to begin my investigations.
Olethreutinae are a subfamily of the Tortricidae, a family of moths with larvae that include bud and fruit borers and leaf rollers. Olethreutines include species of economic importance, but this monograph celebrates their biodiversity. Although the title suggests that this volume is about Australian representatives of the group, many of the genera extend to Asia and beyond and so, therefore, does the importance of this work. Dr Horak has placed the Australian lineages in a broad geographical context. The work includes a framework phylogeny of the Olethreutinae and discussion of morphology, general biology, and diversity and distribution. A series of genus-level descriptions forms the body of the work, providing a beautifully illustrated coverage of the Australian fauna. Although the focus of the work is on genera, the constituent species are listed and Dr Horak has undertaken a great amount of study at this level.
