Executive Committee
Hillary Morin Peterson, Ph.D.
Hillary is a Brunswick, Maine native who earned her B.S. in Biology with a concentration in Ecology from the University of Maine in 2015, and her Ph.D. in Entomology in 2020 from Penn State University. While a student at UMaine, she had the opportunity to work in two entomology labs and worked with honey bee biology, and with invasive insects in both blueberries (spotted winged drosophila) and in Maine forests (winter moth). She is very passionate about insect biodiversity, and had the opportunity before starting graduate school to intern with Robert Kula at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. (after meeting Dr. Kula at the M.E.S. BioBlitz in 2015), where she learned how to properly classify a new species of wasp (Ormocerus dirigoius). She was able to combine her interests of working in fruit and in forests with invasive species and biodiversity during her Ph.D., where she studied egg parasitoids and predators of the invasive brown marmorated stink bug in tree fruit.
contact for: general MES questions and website questions
e-mail: maineentosociety@gmail.com
President & Webmaster
Roger Rittmaster, M.D.
Roger is a retired endocrinologist who has had a life-long interest in natural history and nature photography. His roots in Maine go back to the 1970’s, when he spent three summers working at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Salisbury Cove. He also did much of his medical training at the Maine Medical Center. During this time he met his wife, Jeannie Hutchins (a native Mainer), who provided the link that brought Roger back to Maine when he retired 12 years ago. Roger also spent two years in the Marshall Islands coordinating the long-term follow-up of Marshallese exposed to radioactive fallout, did his endocrine training at the National Institutes of Health, and eventually became Professor of Medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He finished his career at GlaxoSmithKline in North Carolina, helping to develop a drug (dutasteride) in an area of his research interest.
Roger first became interested in insects around 25 years ago, when a friend introduced him to the butterflies and dragonflies of North Carolina. He then became enamored with photographing insects. Upon retirement he authored, Butterflies Up Close – A Guide to Butterfly Photography. Much of Roger’s photography can be found on the natural history educational site, iNaturalist. Roger is a Maine Master Naturalist, former Chair of the Camden Conservation Commission, and Secretary of the Board of Coastal Mountains Land Trust. He has been an MES member since moving to Maine in 2011. Roger is thrilled to be able to promote education about insects as part of MES.
e-mail: roger.rittmaster@gmail.com
phone: 919-491-5440 (mobile)
Vice-President
Treasurer
(Mr.) Dana Michaud
Dana Michaud is a lifelong entomologist. He started collecting insects as a child and never stopped. Although he received his degree in entomology from the University of Maine, he went the industrial route and worked at the Sappi paper mill in Hinckley, Maine for his entire career. While there, he collected many unusual insect specimens from the water treatment plant. Dana is a mainstay for the entomology community in Maine. Beetles are his specialty, but he is well-versed in all groups and is willing to dive into new orders. His most recent work has been identifying the Syrphidae (flower flies) in the State collections. Dana also spent years working with his friend David Bourque on thousands of specimens that were bycatch from a USDA Forest Service study in Baxter State Park. They collaborated with Don Chandler at the University of New Hampshire on identifications and are co-authors on a paper detailing the Coleoptera species new to Maine. Dana is retired from the mill and now is an adjunct curator for the insect collection at the Maine State Museum. He has lived his life in Waterville, Maine and spent time across the State collecting insects, climbing mountains, camping, and filling his tiny backyard with a myriad of plants that attract a wide variety of insects. He has been MES Treasurer since 2005!
contact for: membership questions
e-mail: djmichaud1@gmail.com
phone: (207) 872-7683
mailing address:
3 Halde Street
Waterville, ME 04901
Secretary
Anna Lee Court
I’ve been a member of MES for about eight years. I went to the Bug Mainia day at the Maine State Museum in 2013, found the MES table and immediately signed up. At first I just participated in the Winter Workshops, then my partner and I went to the BioBlitz on beetles at Acadia National Park, and finally I graduated to taking part in Field Days. I made friends, learned a lot, and wanted more so I started to go to the Museum Annex to work under Charlene Donahue’s and Dana Michaud’s direction on the insect collections. All of this whetted my appetite and curiosity about insects, both of which seem to have no limits! I don’t have a biology background but my long term domestic partner is a botanist and cheerfully teaches me a lot of biology.
Let’s just say that I’m a rank amateur re insects, but endlessly interested. I’ve indulged passions for spiders, dragonflies, butterflies and moths and beetles, identifying but not collecting. Currently, I’m finally reading all those books I bought on entomology and even taking notes!
My career had nothing to do with insects. I was an energy consultant for 20 years, first in the oil and gas industry in Louisiana and then in electric utility energy conservation strategy in Boston, and finally building energy efficient housing in Cambridge and Dorchester. I’m recently retired from my second career which was working with teenagers in various ways. My last job was teaching sex ed in Somerset County. I loved this work and was good at it, if I do say so myself.
contact for: changes of address
e-mail: annaagnesleecourt@gmail.com
phone: (207) 474-8691
mailing address:
P. O. Box 600
Skowhegan, ME 04976-0600
Newsletter Editor
Bob Nelson
Bob Nelson earned his B.A. and M.S. degrees in geology, and his Ph.D. in an individually structured program in "Multidisciplinary Quaternary Paleoecology." In this latter, he developed skills in reconstructing past environments from the pollen, seeds, and insect remains found in sediments. He began collecting Coleoptera in 1979, to provide a reference collection to assist in identifying the disarticulated fragments in the sediments. He discovered over a dozen species new to science while collecting in California, Washington State, and Alaska, two of which (Oxypoda nelsoni Lohse and Micropeplus nelsoni Campbell) are now named for him. After ten years with the U.S. Geological Survey working in northern Alaska, he joined the faculty at Colby College where he taught geology until retiring in 2018. A coauthor on Richard Dearborn's synthesis paper on the Carabidae of Maine, his principal interest is in expanding the knowledge of Maine's ground beetles, and particularly of those taxa found in wetland environments.
contact for: anything related to the newsletter
e-mail: BeetleBob2003@gmail.com
phone: (207) 426-9629
mailing address:
779 Battle Ridge Road
Clinton, ME 04927
Member-At-Large of the
Executive Committee
Cathie Murray
Cathie Murray met insects and other wild creatures as a child, exploring backyards, empty lots, water bodies and wetlands in the urban wilds of Syracuse NY. She was given the amazing opportunity to study Marine Biology on Vinalhaven Island in Maine as a teenager and moved to Maine as soon as she could after college. Although she majored in Biology at Brown University, the social issues of the day took her in other directions, working in public health, education, and clean energy responses to climate change.
Among many endeavors, she and her husband worked in public schools on the Dine (Navajo) Nation for 6 years when their kids were young. She saw her first Tarantula hawk there, carrying a tarantula! She spent the last 13 years of her paid career with a non-profit working with allies and power sector regulators in the US and internationally on policies that accelerated the use of renewable energy and energy efficiency to mitigate climate change. In this role she was privileged to work with partners in India for 8 years, and live there on a regular basis. (The insect diversity there was overwhelming!)
In 2014, nearing retirement, Cathie was accepted into the one year training program to become a Maine Master Naturalist. With that, she returned to the delights of her childhood and has been seeking ways to connect others with the delights of the natural world ever since.
MES became part of her life the year she decided to learn a lot more about insects by teaching a Senior College course about them. As she sought out local experts and resources she met some of the early founding members, Charlene Donahue, Dana Michaud and Kathy Claerr, who lent her materials from the Maine State Museum's insect collection. They were so enthusiastic, helpful and welcoming that she was drawn to become active in MES. At the same time she was drawn to help people who love birds, gardens and natural beauty recognize the absolute vital role insects play in keeping it all going. And she finds insects and their life stories fascinating. If she can help one more person love a bug, or at least not say "ugh," she is happy.
email: birdsneedbugs@gmail.com
Member-At-Large of the
Executive Committee
Kathy Murray
Kathy has had a lifelong interest in biology, starting with collecting and observing grasshoppers and bees in her backyard and empty urban lots while growing up in the Pacific Northwest. After studying zoology at Oregon State University she worked seasonally for the US Forest Service and as a technician in a genetics laboratory using flour beetles as the study organism (which are easier to rear and less smelly than fruit flies!). Realizing that the field of insect ecology offered more adventure than laboratory research, she crossed the country (in a 15-year old Rambler station wagon) to earn MS and PhD degrees in entomology at University of Maine and University of Massachusetts, finally settling with her husband and two daughters back in Maine. After almost a decade of teaching at research at the University of Maine, followed by 22 years as the pest management specialist with the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, she now enjoys more time in retirement to observe insects in their natural habitats in Maine’s abundant forests and fields. Kathy is a founding member of MES.
e-mail: kdmurray50@gmail.com
mailing address:
P. O. Box 45
Troy, ME 04987-0045