Dr. Richard Wilkerson is a medical entomologist with interest in the systematics of the fly families Culicidae and Tabanidae. Dr. Wilkerson was manager of WRBU until his retirement in 2011, later returning as Emeritus Research Associate.
Before his time with WRBU, Dr. Wilkerson spent two and a half years as a U.S. Army Enlisted Preventive Medicine Specialist (instructor), and completed two years of predoctoral research in Cali, Colombia at the Universidad del Valle. Dr. Wilkerson’s published dissertation is Horse flies (Diptera: Tabanidae) of the Colombian departments of Chocó, Valle and Cauca, in which are described 36 new species.
Apart from two publications in progress—the first comprehensive set of keys to South American Anopheles females, males, and larvae, and the two-volume book Mosquitoes of the World—Dr. Wilkerson has over 100 authored or co-authored peer-reviewed publications on systematics of Culicidae and Tabanidae, and has had a wide range of collaborators, using a variety of research techniques for research including basic morphology for species descriptions and keys, and DNA methods. He has done extensive field work in the Neotropics and speaks and reads Spanish and Portuguese.
Dr. Wilkerson has a B.S. from the University of North Carolina in Botany, and M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Florida in Entomology.
Selected Publications:
Wilkerson R, Linton YM, Fonseca D, Schultz T, Price D, Strickman D. Making mosquito taxonomy useful: A stable classification of tribe Aedini that balances utility with current knowledge of evolutionary relationships. PLoS ONE. 2015; 10(7), e0133602. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0133602
Foley DH, Linton YM, Ruiz-Lopez JF, Conn JE, Sallum MAM, et al. Geographic distribution, evolution, and disease importance of species within the Neotropical Anopheles albitarsis Group (Diptera, Culicidae). Journal of Vector Ecology. 2014; 39(1): 168-181.
Coetzee M, Hunt RH, Wilkerson RC, Della Torre A, Coulibaly MB, Besansky NJ. Anopheles coluzzii and Anopheles amharicus, new members of the Anopheles gambiae complex. Zootaxa. 2013; 3619(3): 246–274.
