2014 Vice President-Elect

Alma Solis
USDA-ARS Systematic Entomology Lab

Biographical Sketch
Dr. M. Alma Solis earned a BS and an MA in biological sciences from the University of Texas at Austin. Her master’s research was on the leafmining moths of deciduous trees in northeastern Mexico, and her Ph.D. research at the University of Maryland at College Park was on the phylogenetics of the Epipaschiinae, a subfamily of pyraloid moths. She is currently research leader of the Systematic Entomology Laboratory, Agriculture Research Service, USDA. She has been an adjunct professor at Mississippi State University and Cornell University, and an associate dean at the University of Texas at Brownsville. She is a world authority on the Pyraloidea, or snout moths, and has published more than 80 research papers and book chapters on the systematics and classification of this group. She is the curator of the Pyraloidea and related groups at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Her major interests have been higher-level classification and pyraloid diversity using morphology, larval habits, and DNA barcoding. She has conducted fieldwork in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guyana, Mexico, Paraguay, and the Philippines, and has visited and worked in major museums throughout Europe and North America, including Hawaii. She has been a member of ESA since 1983, and over the years she has moderated student and submitted presentations, judged student presentations and posters, and organized symposia. She has served on the Resolutions Committee (1996) and the Thomas Say Award Committee (2003-05), and is Treasurer of the Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity Section (2010-present).