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Hi, I'm Steve Bullington. You already know what these web pages are about, or you wouldn't be here reading this now. This section in particular is intended to define who I am--my qualifications if you like--and how I see these pages fitting in to the overall progress of Dipterology (scientific work on flies).
So, to get the big things out of the way first, I am a retired entomologist. I got my BS. degree in Biology, and my MS. and PhD. degrees in Entomology. My thesis was on the taxonomy of gall-like scale insects (Homoptera: Kermesidae) and my dissertation was on the taxonomy of a group of robber flies (Diptera: Asilidae).
For the 40 years since graduating with my PhD. I worked in a variety of entomological positions--3 postdocs totalling 4 years; 3 years as an Assistant Curator for an Entomological Museum; 9-years as a consultant and contract reseacher, working for myself, mainly for the chocolate industry, but also in forensics; and last, 21 years as a regulatory agriculturist. In retrospect, I had a well-rounded and intresting career as a professional Entomologist, hitting most of the bases.
I've been collecting or otherwise working on robber flies since I was a Biology undergraduate in 1974. This site is a continuation of work I started on the group of robber flies I revised for my PhD. dissertation. It has nothing to do with what I did for money while I was working.
As an aside, the tempation in writing a section like this is to make it a history of your endeavors--detailing why you did this or that, and trying to fit your experience in with the general march of your profession as it morphed over the years. I did this in earlier versions of this section. Nobody cares. And rightly so. My story is no different in its general outlines from those of dozens of people I know, who started out just like me, whose vision of how the world worked was differnt from the reality they faced when trying to find a permanent position. Just like me, these people had to adapt in one way or another. I did, and most of them did, too. I managed as well as anyone. I can't complain about anything.Now for a bit on what I plan to do, or more accurately, can do, as a retiree, at home; that is, an amatuer, without a wet lab and a crew of people working for me. That first clause about a wet lab is important. I cannot do anything that involves DNA, at least directly. First, I wouldn't know what I was doing. I never worked on molecular diagnostics. Second, you have to be licenced. For a private individual, that is not practical. I may eventually be able to collaborate with a another researcher at a professional molecular lab, or sub-contract to a business concern. But for now that is in the future, if ever.
The second part, about not having a crew of people working for me, is also important. What I am doing is a one-man operation. It therefore necessarily will be slower, than say, a project at a University, with a host of participating graduate students. In short, it will probably take me the rest of my life. Given this, I have arranged with a large museum to take my specimens and any uncompleted work if I die before finishing things.
Now for what I can do. I am set up with an adequate entomological workspace. I of course have all the standard collecting and storage equipment that would be resquisite for someone collecting pinned robber flies. I have cabinets for Cornell drawers. I have cabinets for 4-dram vials. I can laser print insect labels on high-quality card stock. Additionally, I can mount minute insects as well as insect parts on slides in Canada Balsam. I have everything necassary to create and edit large plates with drawings, drawn from either whole insects on pins, or from specimens on slides. I can both scan and print large format plates. I have every kind of microscope and attached camera or camera lucida/drawing tube I could possibly need for examining, drawing, or photographing specimens; for those on pins, dissecting microscopes; and, for those mounted on slides, a variety of standard brightfield, phase-contrast, and projection stands. I am also equipped on my computer to warehouse and retrieve data via a database, to analyze data and generate cladograms, to make distribution maps, and even to self publish. I also have as much asilid "literature" as I could collect over the past 50 years--over 2000 physical papers and offprints, dozens of books, and thousands more PDFs of research articles. My home setup is actually better, at least for what I plan to do, than anything I ever worked with while either at school or professionally.
I saved mentioning that obviously I am setup as well to create web pages for last. That is because I want to emphasize that one of my goals for these pages is to be, as much as possible, an "atlas" of drawings and maps for the group. One of my few heros is Gordon Floyd Ferris, whose Atlas of the Scale Insects of North America I consider to be a masterpiece. It is chock full of well laid-out and well-executed plates. In a way it is a work of art, in the most functional sense of the word. I've made many, many plates, published or yet-to-be published, for both scale insects and robber flies. I have yet to post any plates for Laphriini here, as I haven't figured out how I plan to publish, and I don't want to scoop myself.
What I just said brings me to a big issue that might not be so clear from everything I have written--I'm very conflicted about how to mesh what is and will be presented on this site with what I manage to publish via the tradional method of papers in reviewed journals. This has two, contradictory, aspects. First, I do not want to "scoop" myself by making something available here. Conversely if I do publish, as has always been my intention, I don't want to lock something away either, in some format I have no control over. Specifically, once a plate or drawing has been published elsewhere, I am not sure if it can legally be republished on these pages. Which would be a shame, as this site is what people will see. This conundrum has acted as a huge brake for what I have been willing to put on the site for public view. Going forward, it would be simplest for me to just concentrate on this site and have it as the last word on my work. If I did that, I could triple the amount of material here tomorrow, with complete revisions of the genera I described as new in my dissertation, and a substantial but still uncompleted revision with another researcher of the genus Choerades in North America. All of these have completed plates for both the female terminalia and for the distribution maps, and the manuscripts for the new genera have a series of comparative plates for portions of the male terminalia, and for seasonal distributions as well. To resolve this, I've thought about having a versioning system, with dates, which would allow the whole site to be printed in book form as a downloadable PDF or possibly as a CD ISO with the click of a button. Where I described a new taxon, the description could be dated locally and that description included in the overall work, which at least for a while, would be updated regularly. If and when the site as a whole was no longer updated, the final date would be the overall publication date. I could also get people to review various sections which were intended to be dated records rather than current presentations. Anyway, food for thought. I haven't decided what to do yet.
To finish up, a listing of my professional presentations on robber flies is here; and one for my technical papers is here. The latter also includes a small section with my taxonomic papers on scale insects.
I'm enjoying making this site bit-by-bit. I hope you find it useful.