Megaloblatta
09-21-2007, 03:21 PM
I'm George Beccaloni, one of the administrators of this Forum and the deputy editor of the Blattodea Culture Group's journal, Cockroach Studies. I have been interested in cockroaches for over 20 years and was one of the founders of the BCG in 1986.
I have been passionately interested in natural history for as long as I can remember (my earliest memories are of my seashell collection and looking for hedgehogs in our garden in Nairobi, Kenya, aged 3). I grew up in Zimbabwe, where at the age of 10 I started collecting butterflies. After leaving Zimbabwe in 1981 I then went to Colorado, USA for 1.5 years before coming to jolly old Britain. I did the remainder of my schooling here, went to University, did a PhD on South American butterflies, and then got various jobs at The Natural History Museum in London, where I am now the curator of the world's most important collection of orthopteroid insects (i.e. roaches, mantids, grasshoppers & crickets and relatives).
I have organised cockroach hunting expeditions to Papua New Guinea, Ecuador and Madagascar, and am going back to Madagascar for a 5 week self-funded collecting trip in November. I am currently very busy working on three books, several scientific papers (including a study of Madagascan hissing roaches), my online world catalogue of cockroaches (the Blattodea Species File (http://blattodea.speciesfile.org/HomePage.aspx)) as well as other stuff. Phew!
I have been passionately interested in natural history for as long as I can remember (my earliest memories are of my seashell collection and looking for hedgehogs in our garden in Nairobi, Kenya, aged 3). I grew up in Zimbabwe, where at the age of 10 I started collecting butterflies. After leaving Zimbabwe in 1981 I then went to Colorado, USA for 1.5 years before coming to jolly old Britain. I did the remainder of my schooling here, went to University, did a PhD on South American butterflies, and then got various jobs at The Natural History Museum in London, where I am now the curator of the world's most important collection of orthopteroid insects (i.e. roaches, mantids, grasshoppers & crickets and relatives).
I have organised cockroach hunting expeditions to Papua New Guinea, Ecuador and Madagascar, and am going back to Madagascar for a 5 week self-funded collecting trip in November. I am currently very busy working on three books, several scientific papers (including a study of Madagascan hissing roaches), my online world catalogue of cockroaches (the Blattodea Species File (http://blattodea.speciesfile.org/HomePage.aspx)) as well as other stuff. Phew!