The International Research Fellow Awards Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will provide twenty-four months of support to Dr. Aysha L. Prather to work with Dr. Douglas C. Currie at the Royal Ontario Museum's Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Biology in Toronto, Ontario in Canada. This project supports a phylogenetic and taxonomic study of a family of caddisflies (Trichoptera) that includes a large number of tropical species. The research will produce a phylogeny-based definition of these taxa and resolve taxonomic questions within a tropical genus. The work will be done at the Royal Ontario Museum under the supervision of Dr. Douglas Currie, a Trichoptera and Diptera systematist who has worked extensively in Southeast Asia.
