It is my honor to receive the FLMNH Summer 2024 Travel Award, and thanks to the funding support, I get to network with people all around the world and had a fruitful summer.

My Ph.D. dissertation work largely focuses on the phylogeny of the family Psychidae (Insecta: Lepidoptera), commonly known as bagworms. The family comprises approximately 1,350 species and 300 genera and is distributed worldwide. What makes this topic so fascinating is that most members of the family possess sexual dimorphism – females can be winged, apterous (loss of wings), or in some species are even less mobile, being vermiform into adulthood and lacking legs, wings, eyes, antennae, and mouthparts entirely – a spectacular evolutionary innovation. However, the diversity of the family is less explored, and there are many biological issues that need to be addressed.

In addition to utilizing the collection resources at the McGuire Center, we still need to obtain both fresh and dried materials from all over the world, especially given the high diversity of this family. This summer, I first visited one of our collaborators, Dr. Shen-Horn Yen (NSYSU) in Taiwan, and obtained multiple precious specimens for molecular research. I also visited the Psychidae collection at NSYSU on 07/31/2024. Subsequently, I visited the National Museum of Natural History (NMNS) in Taichung, Taiwan, to check the specimen availability there; however, there were very few collections of the family present.

I then attended the International Congress of Entomology 2024 in Kyoto, Japan, on August 25th. This was my first time attending an international meeting of this scale, and I got to meet many people from all over the world and from different fields. The most valuable aspect of attending this meeting was not only presenting my preliminary results as a poster presenter but also making connections. Additionally, I attended various social and academic events, such as the lepidopterist dinner, the Forum for Taiwanese and Japanese Entomologists, and many other symposiums over the course of five days.

Thanks for the FLMNH Summer 2024 Travel Award, I get to have the chance to attend and participating in these amazing academic activities and broaden my horizons. Go gators!

David Cheng is a graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. through the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Department of Entomology and Nematology, advised by Dr. Akito Kawahara.

The 2024 Summer Student Travel Awards are supported by the FLMNH Department of Natural History, including funds from the Louis C. and Jane Gapenski Endowed Fellowship and the B.J. and Eve Wilder Endowment. If you would like to help support this fund for future student awards, please go to:

Louis C. and Jane Gapenski Endowed Fellowship
B.J. and Eve Wilder Endowment