Christiane Weirauch

 Christiane joined the faculty in Entomology at UCR in 2007 as a systematic entomologist. Her interest is in systematics and evolution of Heteroptera, the true bugs, with an emphasis on Reduviidae (assassin bugs including kissing bugs), Miridae (plant bugs), and more recently Dipsocoromorpha (minute litter bugs). Her research focuses broadly on biodiversity discovery and documentation, gathering and integrating natural history data, and revealing phylogenetic relationships. She uses the combined data to uncover the evolution of exciting biological phenomena, such as prey capture strategies and preferences in assassin bugs, blood feeding in the disease transmitting kissing bugs, and complex genitalic systems and wing morphs in litter bugs. “None of the research I am conducting would be possible without natural history collections: from taxonomic revisions, to morphological and molecular phylogenetic analyses, biogeographic studies, and the evolution of specific traits, we rely on collections for much of the specimen material we study, as repositories for voucher specimens, and as sources of biological data (e.g. host plant associations in plant bugs).”