Conrad Labandeira

I was raised in the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley of California, where I received an undergraduate degree from California State University, Fresno, majoring in geology, biology, and anthropology. I subsequently received a M.S. the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, where I completed a thesis examining the systematics of a Cambrian trilobite genus. I then completed a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago where I did a dissertation that determined phenetically the number of fundamental modern insect mouthpart classes and projected them into the fossil record to ascertain the evolution of insect feeding styles. I then was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I explored arthropod fecal pellets and damaged plant tissues to assess the types of herbivory and detritivory occurring in Late Carboniferous coal-swamp forests. I have been a member of the Department of Paleobiology at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History for the past 34 years, where I have continued my doctoral and postdoctoral research in addition to new avenues involving fossil insects and the ecological evolution of plant-insect interactions in deep time.

I am a paleoecologist whose research program involves the interactions of insects, plants and fungi in the evolution of terrestrial ecosystems ranging from the Early Devonian to the present day. My work has involved extensive collaborations with students and other colleagues from around the world. A special emphasis has been the expansion of major insect herbivore feeding guilds such as galling and oviposition types during the late Paleozoic of North America as evidenced by their damage on plant fossils. Following the Permian/Triassic ecological crisis, I have documented the dramatic rebound of herbivore diversity and intensity on extinct ferns and gymnosperms from the Late Triassic Karoo Basin of South Africa. I have worked with doctoral students from China examining the role of arthropod and pathogen herbivores in the mid-Mesozoic transition from gymnosperm to angiosperm dominated plant assemblages from Northeastern China and Nebraska. I have also explored the extirpation or survival of insect herbivores with generalized to specialized plant-host associations during the Cretaceous to Paleogene ecological event that marked the extinction of the dinosaurs. The response of insect herbivores to the dramatic interval of climate change during the mid-Cenozoic preserved in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming was explored, representing a major caution for current global warming.

Research Areas

• Arthropod paleoecology and the evolution of terrestrial ecosystems
• Paleobiological origin and evolution of arthropod herbivory
• Paleobiological origin and evolution of insect pollination.
• Evolutionary development and paleobiology of insect mouthparts
• Terrestrial food webs of the past

Facilities

• Labandeira Lab, Paleobiology Department of the National Museum of Natural History
• Paleobiology Labs, Paleobiology Department, National Museum of Natural History
• Scientific Imaging Lab, National Museum of Natural History

"    https://naturalhistory.si.edu/staff/conrad-labandeira    https://www.linkedin.com/in/        0000-0002-4838-5099    https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FFSHVo1xBwK-ukilhDHrCbsd1wRnTUS5