Grimaldi, Davd A.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Curator and Professor Invertebrate Zoology

Education Cornell University, Ph.D, 1986 SUNY Binghamton, M.Sc., 1983 University of Connecticut, B.Sc., 1978 Dr. Grimaldi’s research is broadly concerned with the evolution of insects, from species-level diversity in drosophilid fruit flies to the phylogeny of orders over the past 400 million years. The research relies on fieldwork collecting recent species and excavating new deposits, exploratory morphology, study of insect fossils (particularly those exquisitely preserved in amber), and phylogenetics. This information is then used as a scaffold for the interpretation of ecological and evolutionary patterns in insects. A major research project at present includes the relation between the radiations of insects and angiosperms in the Cretaceous. This project is based primarily on the systematics of insects preserved in diverse deposits of Cretaceous amber from New Jersey, Myanmar, Lebanon, Alaska, and other localities. Another major project is on a diverse deposit of Triassic insects from Virginia, the only such deposit in the Western Hemisphere. Ongoing research explores the diversity and biogeography of a Miocene community preserved in amber from Hispaniola.

PUBLICATIONS

 * Engel, M. S. and D. A. Grimaldi 2005. Primitive new ants in Cretaceous amber from Myanmar, New Jersey, and Canada (Hymenoptrea: Formicidae). American Museum Novitates 3485: 1-24


 * Grimaldi, D.; Agosti, D. 2000b. A formicine in New Jersey Cretaceous amber (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) and early evolution of the ants. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 97: 13: 13678-136


 * Grimaldi, D.; Agosti, D.; Carpenter, J. M. 1997. New and rediscovered primitive ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in Cretaceous amber from New Jersey, and their phylogenetic relationships. Am. Mus. Novit. 3208: 1-43


 * Grimaldi, D. & Engel, M.S. 2005. Evolution of the Insects: 755 pp. Cambridge Univ. Press (Formicidae pp. 440-453).