Prof. Pete Cranston
Peter is currently Professor of Entomology at the University of California in Davis, where he teaches systematic entomology and biodiversity. He is co-editor of the Royal Entomological Society’s journal Systematic Entomology. His research interests are the systematics, ecology and biogeography of aquatic insects, particularly the Chironomidae (non-biting midges). In his childhood years in the West Midlands of the UK in the 1950s, he was allowed, even encouraged, to roam the countryside with friends and siblings, and he developed a fascination with aquatic wildlife – birds, mammals and the larger insects. His formal education built on these interests, thanks to the support of a high-school biology teacher who encouraged him to undertake fieldwork projects. Peter earned a BSc in biology at the University of London while he was in paid employment at London’s Natural History Museum, where he was curating the enormous national and global collections of true flies (Diptera). For his PhD, also at the University of London, he studied the development stages (larvae and pupae) of the dominant group of aquatic flies – the chironomid midges. He has travelled widely ever since, studying these insects in all their life-history stages to understand their ecology and evolution. After 17 years working in London, he relocated to the Australian National Insect Collection in CSIRO, Canberra, to work with others who wished to use aquatic insects for biological monitoring of waterways. He had to get up to speed rapidly on Australian entomology, as he was asked to co-author chapters on ‘Systematics’ and ‘Biogeography’ for the 2nd edition of the well-known book ‘The Insects of Australia’. This experience led Peter and co-author Penny Gullan to write a textbook – ‘The Insects: An Outline of Entomology’ – addressing global entomological issues and making the subject interesting to undergraduate students: a 4th edition of this popular text was published earlier this year. From the USA, Peter and Penny make frequent research trips to the southern hemisphere, and they will soon return to Australia to pursue their interests in the systematics of austral insects.