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Featured Scientists
 Paul Goldstein, Ph.D.
Zoology Department
Curator, Insects
Butterflies may be the most popular Lepidoptera species, but zoologist Paul Goldstein has an affinity for the other side of the family tree: moths, which account for 90 percent of the Lepidoptera superfamilies. Goldstein studies moths found in grass-dominated ecosystems like Illinois prairies and is working with other scientists to document the butterflies and moths associated exclusively with prairie ecosystems.
For over 15 years Goldstein has studied moths and their habitats on Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts, home to over 1,300 species of moths and butterflies found nowhere else in the world. Goldstein is working with a colleague from the American Museum of Natural History to find and describe unknown species of moths that live in the native bamboo stands or “canebrakes” in southern Illinois—by sequencing their DNA and comparing physical features.
New species of moths are discovered all the time, and Goldstein says this points out how little we know about the biodiversity in our own backyards. “There are an awful lot of animals in our own backyard that we know virtually nothing about,” says Goldstein. “You can turn on a porch light somewhere near Chicago and have a moth show up that is relatively unknown to science because we don’t know what its caterpillar looks like or what plants it eats.”
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