People

Allie joined the rare Charitable Reserve team from May 2016. She conducted many surveys of a suite of organisms on a regular basis in the nature reserve until taking another position in February 2018.

Role(s): 

  • Data producer
Sonia has been studying monarchs for 15 years, and has been focusing much of her time on studying the interactions between the parasite Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE) and their host, monarch butterflies. She is the leader of the MonarchHealth program, and she is one of the founding members of MonarchNet.

NAB-Net Snapshot: 

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  • Data producer, Data user
Jade Anderson is a passionate naturalist who is interested in ecological restoration and conservation. She started as an ecological monitoring assistant at rare Charitable Research Reserve in 2022 focusing her efforts on butterfly monitoring. In 2023 she returned as the ecological monitoring intern to continue conducting monitoring surveys at rare.

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  • Data producer
Gina leads the Peninsula Point Monarch Monitoring Project.

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  • Data producer
With Jen Zaspel, Jon Bertolas is launching the Wisconsin Butterfly Monitoring Program in 2019.

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  • Data producer
Greg is a researcher who has worked extensively on both movement and climate ecology. He has used the Massachussets data to do an extensive analysis on the impacts of climate on the butterfly community. Greg used data extracted from the Massachussets list-serve, another potential wide-spread data source. He is currently a postdoc at the University of Alberta and was previously a postdoc at Harvard.

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  • Data user
Nathan is the coordinator of the Iowa Butterfly Monitoring Network. He is also working with a team of student developers at Iowa State University who developed an app to record butterfly data for surveys with either strict or casual protocols. Below is a link to a video describing how this developing product works.

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  • Data producer
Julie has been the HMANA Monitoring Site Director since 2009. With a bachelor's degree in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Maine and a Master's degree in Conservation Biology from Antioch Graduate School in New Hampshire, Julie has studies raptors as well as other bird species and even a few mammals across the continent.

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  • Data producer
Through 2018, Jutta co-managed the science and stewardship team of IRC. She started the butterfly monitoring project at Limestone Canyon in 2011, but her expertise is in invasive species control, developing local genetically representative native seed for restoration, and using passive restoration to improve habitat. She also leads the volunteer land stewardship program, which assists with restoration and invasive species control. At the end of 2018, she accepted a new position with the California Invasive Plant Council, but she intends to continue assisting with the Orange County Butterfly Network as much as possible.

NAB-Net Snapshot: 

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  • Data producer
Kevin earned his Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology from UNR. In XXXX he and his wife, Cynthia founded Nevada Bugs and Butterflies in order to provides hands - on experiences with science and living things to cultivate love of the natural world and local environmental responsibility.

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  • Data producer
Ashley is a biologist who has been studying butterflies for 10 years. From 2013 to 2018 Ashley directed Michigan Butterfly Network, based at the Kalamazoo Nature Center. In 2018, she presented at the Lepidopterists' Society annual conference in Ottawa, Canada about her butterfly monitoring program work.

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  • Data producer
Jaret is the Assistant Director for Research of the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity and IFAS Assistant Professor of Entomology at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He coordinates the Florida Butterfly Monitoring Network and is on our steering committee.

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  • Data producer
Phillip deMaynadier is a wildlife biologist for Maine's Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) where he leads the Reptile-Amphibian-Invertebrate Group. He has authored over 40 scientific publications, is active on several state and national wildlife technical committees, and serves on the Graduate Faculty at University of Maine’s Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology.

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  • Data producer
Aleksandra is an ecologist and entomologist with 11 years experience in habitat restoration, environmental analysis, insect taxonomy and scientific communication. Aleksandra started coordinating ecological monitoring programs at the rare Charitable Reserve in 2023 where she currently holds the role of Conservation Scientist.

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  • Data producer
Ted co-coordinates butterfly surveys and volunteers for the Orange County Butterfly Monitoring Program.

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  • Data producer
Candace Fallon is a senior conservation biologist with the Xerces Society. She leads their public lands work, focusing on the conservation and management of at-risk invertebrate species in the West, including numerous butterfly species. Candace is a co-author of Gardening for Butterflies: How You Can Attract and Protect Beautiful, Beneficial Insects. She co-coordinates the Cascade-Siskiyou Butterfly Monitoring Network with Charles Schelz of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.

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  • Data producer
Jeff is the president of the North American Butterfly Association, which he formed in 1992. Jeff has written several guide books for North American butterflies, including starting the "through binoculars" series that has revolutionized the way people learn about and experience butterflies and other insects in nature.

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  • Data producer
Nancy Hamlett coordinates the butterfly monitoring program for PRISSM – the Partnership of Regional Institutions for Sage Scrub Monitoring. Nancy, a retired Professor of Biology at Harvey Mudd College, coordinates the volunteer program and maintains the website and the species lists for the Claremont Colleges’ Bernard Field Station (BFS). Nancy has been documenting insects at the BFS since 2010, and is a member of the Lorquin Entomological Society and a contributor to BugGuide and Butterflies and Moths of North America.

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  • Data producer
Shiran Hershcovich is the Lepidopterist Manager at Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, CO. She leads community science projects like the Colorado Butterfly Monitoring Network (CBMN) and Butterfly Quest, a lepidopteran longevity study.

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  • Data producer
Kathryn is the Lepidopterist at the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the coordinator of the Texas Butterfly Monitoring Network. She is interested in citizen science as a research tool, particularly with regard to butterflies, moths, and other insects.

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  • Data producer
Michael Holy has had a lifelong interest in lepidoptera. He started his first butterfly collection at age 11 from specimens collected in a field near his suburban Buffalo, N.Y. home. After graduating from the University at Buffalo with a Biology degree, Mike taught middle school science for three years, first in Norfolk, Va., then Prince Georges Co, Md. He has taught a variety of Biology and Science courses at Hannibal High School, in upstate New York and earned a Masters Degree in Biology Education at SUNY Oswego. He chaired the Hannibal High School Science Department from 1997 until 2004 and retired after 30 years at Hannibal High. Mike Holy has had a long association with the Rice Creek Field Station. He taught basic entomology to youths in the Rice Creek Summer Program from 1985-87 and 1992, and in the Sheldon Institute for four years in the 1990s. For 11 years he was President of the Board of Directors of the Rice Creek Associates, a Field Station support group. Mike has been a member of the Lepidopterists’ Society since 1978 and the North American Butterfly Association since 2008. Since 1999 Mike has been monitoring butterflies, with SUNY Oswego Biology faculty and students, at the Rice Creek Biological Station.

NAB-Net Snapshot: 

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  • Data producer
Journey North's Founder and Director, Elizabeth Howard, coordinates the program from Vermont. Her office sits on a hillside overlooking Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains. Journey North was founded in 1994. Inspired by the early Internet-based projects in which school children tracked human expeditions (e.g. across the Arctic by dogsled or Africa by bicycle), she saw a clear and exciting parallel between these expeditions and the wildlife migrations that cross the globe with the seasons. She now runs the website, which uses citizen scientists to track the movement of many migratory species and other seasonal phenomenon across North America. She has also been deeply engaged in the analysis of Journey North data, publishing several analyses on the movement patterns of monarchs.

Role(s): 

  • Data producer, Data user, Informatics-data mgt/web
Catherine has been conducting butterfly surveys since XXXX and in 2019 became the Director of the Orange County (CA) Butterfly Monitoring Program.

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  • Data producer
Rebeca is a Texas Master Naturalist with the Guadalupe Chapter based in Schertz, Texas, and a co-coordinator for the Texas Butterfly Monitoring Network. She is active in leading monthly Nature Education programs for children ages 5 - 12 that meet the Texas education curriculum standards covering a wide range of topics regarding the natural world. In addition, she regularly participates in local citizen science projects that involve monitoring local water quality and tracking plants, insects and animals using iNaturalist.

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  • Data producer
Kelly has been the project coordinator for Butterflies and Moths of North America since 2006. She and Thomas Naberhaus designed the database, user interface, and website.

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  • Data producer, Informatics-data mgt/web
Laura is the National Monitoring Coordinator for the Integrated Monarch Monitoring Program at Monarch Joint Venture.

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  • Data producer
Alan Macnaughton is vice-president of the Toronto Entomologists’ Association and leader of their Ontario Butterfly Atlas project. In 2012, he received the Criddle Award from the Entomological Society of Canada for outstanding work as amateur entomologist. All of his insect work is purely as a hobby – he is a professor of accounting at the University of Waterloo.

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  • Data producer
Laura is a Program Manager where she assists with coordinating citizen science surveys of birds, butterflies, and other organisms in Virginia.

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  • Data producer
Kent is a senior conservation biologist at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies in Norwich, Vermont and leader of the Vermont Atlas of Life. His research focuses on bird and insect ecology and conservation. He is the PI for the Vermont Butterfly Atlas, conducted monitoring and research of alpine butterflies in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and is co-leader of e-Butterfly.org. He has wide-ranging experiences and interests with citizen science, communications, and conservation photography.

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  • Data producer
Steve is the Curator of Education and Citizen Science Coordinator at Knoxville Zoo. He is working to set up a new butterfly monitoring network in Tennessee - and perhaps coordinate with groups in the Carolinas for a larger monitoring network in the Southeast. Steve is also coordinating our effort to catalog and standardize our protocols, develop materials for new programs, and is a member of our steering committee.

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  • Data producer
Jen is the Community Science Director at the Kalamazoo Nature Center where she leads a variety of nature-based citizen science projects including the Michigan Butterfly Network. She has been studying butterflies alongside a dedicated group of citizen scientists since 2015.

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  • Data producer
Wallace M. Meyer III (Marty) is Director of PRISSM – the Partnership of Regional Institutions for Sage Scrub Monitoring, which in addition to butterflies, includes monitoring of plants, birds, other vertebrates, and weather. Marty is also Director of the Claremont Colleges’ Bernard Biological Field Station and Assistant Professor of Biology at Pomona College. Marty’s research explores the fields of conservation biology, invasion biology, biogeography and ecology, including aspects of population, community and ecosystem ecology. Currently his work is focused on understanding how and why the species composition of local biotas are changing and how such changes directly and indirectly affect ecosystem-level processes and properties, as well as preservation and restoration of sage scrub ecosystems.

NAB-Net Snapshot: 

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  • Data producer
Sarah Moore is the Life Sciences Manager at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Washington. Sarah is exploring the possibility of setting up a new butterfly monitoring network in the Pacific Northwest.

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  • Data producer
Lea Morgan is curator of invertebrates and manager the Butterfly Garden at The Museum of Science in Boston. Lea is launching a new butterfly monitoring program that will focus on the Massachusetts/Connecticut/Rhode Island area of New England.

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  • Data producer
Gail is Coordinator of the Southwest Monarch Study, a Citizen Science project based in Arizona. She has been studying monarchs since 2006.

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  • Data producer
Thomas is the technology coordinator for Butterflies and Moths of North America. He is also on our steering committee and is developing the new data entry portal system for the regional Pollard programs that are part of this network.

NAB-Net Snapshot: 

Role(s): 

  • Data producer, Informatics-data mgt/web
Karen has been studying monarchs since 1984. She is the Director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum and an adjunct Professor of Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology at University of Minnesota. She is the former director of the Monarch Lab which runs the Monarch Larvae Monitoring Project and also Monarchs in the Classroom. She is also a founding member of MonarchNet and on the steering committee of The Butterfly Network.

NAB-Net Snapshot: 

Role(s): 

  • Data producer, Informatics-analysis tools
Jeff is a former faculty member at Duke University where he conducted research on forest ecology and climate change; taught courses in ecology, forestry, and wildlife surveys; and coordinated and conducted bird, herp, and butterfly surveys across North Carolina. He moved to Montana in 2014 and spent 3 years establishing the MPG Ranch butterfly monitoring program near Missoula, until moving back to North Carolina by 2017. He is currently a Research Specialist at Georgetown University working with Leslie Ries in the Butterfly Informatics Lab, coordinating and supporting butterfly monitoring programs across the continent through PollardBase and The North American Butterfly Monitoring Network. In 2023, Jeff launched the Carolinas Butterfly Monitoring Program, a community science effort to monitor butterfly populations across both North and South Carolina.

NAB-Net Snapshot: 

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  • Data producer, Data user
Jenna oversaw the research and monitoring department at rare Charitable Reserve for many years. It was her curiosity about wildlife and nature that led her to study biology, and she is now a passionate advocate for our environment and holds a M.Sc. in biology and a M.Ed.

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  • Data producer
Eduardo has worked in the Monarch sanctuary region of Mexico since the 1990s and he leads the WWF Monarch program in Mexico. He was a graduate student of Dr. Lincoln Brower.

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  • Data producer
As a professional naturalist for the past 20 years, Lisa loves being able to enjoy, share, and teach people about nature. Currently, she is working for the Missouri Department of Conservation at Burr Oak Woods Nature Center in the Kansas City area where she has been conducting and coordinating butterfly surveys for many years. She recently started co-directing the Missouri Butterfly Monitoring Network. As Lisa says, “Butterfly surveys help people look at nature in new ways and to focus on some of the small parts that affect the whole. I’m very passionate about teaching the importance of planting native plants, and butterflies can be a bridge for people to learn ways they can contribute to the biodiversity of their neighborhood.”

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  • Data producer
Leslie is the Project Director of the North American Butterfly Monitoring Network. Leslie's background is in butterfly ecology and her interests are in using butterfly data to understand how ecological communities respond to climate and land-use change. Leslie's quest to start using butterfly data from monitoring programs in large-scale analyses is how she started coordinating efforts between the different groups.

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  • Data user
Regina is a botanist, recently retired from the National Park Service. She launched the Cascades Butterfly Project in 2011 based on a 15-year butterfly monitoring effort that had been done at the Rocky Mountain National Park. Regina acts as our liaison to the National Park Service and together we hope to expand butterfly monitoring within the parks.

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  • Data producer
Rick is one of the founders of the Ohio monitoring program. He developed the database used to manage the Ohio Lepidopterists data.

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  • Data producer
Charles Schelz has been the ecologist for the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument since 2017. Over the past 30 years, he has worked with a number of organizations, including the National Park Service, The Nature Conservancy, Oregon State University, San Francisco State University, BioWest Consulting, and the Forest Service. His interests include ecological research, inventory, monitoring, and the restoration of native ecosystems. He co-coordinates the Cascade-Siskiyou Butterfly Monitoring Network with Candace Fallon of the Xerces Society.

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  • Data producer
Along with Kevin Burls, Cynthia co-founded Nevada Bugs & Butterflies. Cynthia is a lifetime Nevadan, native to Reno and earned both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Nevada, Reno. Her Master’s research looked at interactions between Melissa Blues, the parasitoids that attack it, and the ants that defend it. Exploring the wild lands of Nevada for butterflies and other bugs is one of her favorite activities!

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  • Data producer
Matt is one of the founders of RedShift Technologies, a data systems development shop in New York. RedShift has already done much of the development for NABA's various data programs and will be the key developer for our project to build a tool for sharing and visualizing NABA's count data.

Role(s): 

  • Informatics-analysis tools
Art Shapiro has been monitoring butterfly populations across central California for more than 35 years. His is the longest-running butterfly monitoring program in existence and the only one where ALL of the surveys have been done by the same person. This is especially astounding considering that Arthur doesn't own a car.

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  • Data producer
With several years of award winning experience leading citizen science programs, Nancy took over the helm at Journey North in November of 2018.

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  • Data producer
Ronda has worked at the Kalamazoo Nature Center since 2014 and became the Coordinator of the Michigan Butterfly Network in 2018.

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  • Data producer
Jim is in charge of data management at NABA.

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  • Data producer
Sharon is a former officer and lead coordinator of the Massachusetts Butterfly Club's presence on The North American Butterfly Network. She maintained the Butterflies of Massachusetts website where she compiled reports from list-serves and field trips in Massachusetts and authored various papers on Massachusetts butterfly distributions.

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  • Data producer
Ann & Scott Swengel are independent scientists interested in butterflies, birds, plants, conservation, and many aspects of ecology. They started surveying butterflies in Wisconsin in 1986. Since then, they've conducted thousands of surveys at hundreds of sites across several states including Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri.

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  • Data producer
An active birder for 40 years, Brian also regularly studies and photographs butterflies, particularly in coastal Virginia. He helped produce detailed, annotated butterfly lists for two areas, and he established two NABA summer butterfly counts. Brian also manages two public butterfly gardens. He graduated from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, and he is the President of the non-profit Coastal Virginia Wildlife Observatory.

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  • Data producer
Doug is the lead of the Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network and is also the national coordinator of the transect-based "Pollard" programs that are part of this network. Doug has been instrumental in helping many of the new transect programs get off the ground and is on our steering committee.

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  • Data producer
Jim initiated biodiversity monitoring of the Occoquan Region in 1989 and continues to coordinate weekly surveys to date. He leads a diverse group of volunteers ranging from teenagers to retirees who visit area parks to observe and record the region's flora and fauna from wildflowers to birds, butterflies, and dragonflies.

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  • Data producer
Anna Walker coordinates the New Mexico Butterfly Monitoring Program. She is also a Species Survival Officer for Invertebrate Pollinators at the New Mexico BioPark Society. Through this unique conservation program, she works in partnership with the IUCN Species Survival Commission and expert entomologists from across the country to assess the conservation status of insect species, including moths and butterflies. Insect species assessments can be found on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

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  • Data producer
Tyson is a graduate student in Nick Haddad's lab. His focus is on using mechanistic data to understand large-scale patterns. His approach is to collect field data in conjunction with volunteers in the Ohio Lepidopterist monitoring network, and then combine those data with the large-scale monitoring data that are collected. He is currently focused on understanding how climate impacts butterfly physiology and, as a result, population dynamics.

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  • Data user
Jerry is currently the lead organizer of the Ohio Lepidopterists Butterfly Monitoring Network. This is the second oldest pollard-based network in North America.

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  • Data producer
Irmi Willcockson is a Texas Master Naturalist with the Gulf Coast Chapter. In addition to co-directing the Texas Butterfly Network monitoring program, she also enjoys kayaking and nature journaling. Irmi took over the Directorship in 2019.

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  • Data producer
Elise is the Butterfly Coordinator for the Gardens on Spring Creek Butterfly House in Fort Collins, CO, which is operated in partnership with Butterfly Pavilion (Westminster, CO). She assumed leadership of the Colorado Butterfly Monitoring Network in 2021, following a new-found passion for volunteer-based community science that just so happened - and continues - to align with her love for the outdoors, butterflies, and conservation.

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  • Data producer
Chuck is the lead for the two Dilley Routes of the Orange County (CA) Butterfly Network.

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  • Data producer
Tad is an entomologist at the Missouri Botanical Garden's Butterfly House in St. Louis where he coordinates the Missouri Butterfly Monitoring Network.

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  • Data producer
Jen earned her PhD in entomology at the University of Florida and has held faculty positions at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and Purdue University. She is now the Curator of Zoology and Director of the Puelicher Butterfly Vivarium at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Partnered with the Milwaukee Harbor District, she oversees the development of the Wisconsin Butterfly Monitoring Program, scheduled to launch on PollardBase as part of the North American Butterfly Monitoring Network in 2019.

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  • Data producer