About Us

The Ask an Entomologist banner featuring on the left an drawn orange tree hopper and on the right the drawn images of Joe Ballenger, Joanie Mars, and Nancy Miorelli

 

We are “Ask an Entomologist.”

Together we tackle your hardest questions about insects, their biology, ecology, physiology, or whatever else your beautiful and curious mind wants to know. So go ahead … ask us. But first be sure to read Our Rules.

The Writers

Nancy Miorelli: an adventurous woman holding 2 machetes while sporting jewelry including a dragonfly necklace and blue morpho butterfly earrings. Has her Master's degree in Entomology. After graduating, Nancy promptly moved to the Ecuadorian Cloud Forest and decided to stay forever. Nancy runs her own personalized tourism business focused on entomology, ecology, conservation, and culture. When she's not having a wild adventure though Ecuador's diverse ecosystems, she's conducting online workshops focused on entomology but in a gamified way. Her favourite thing to talk about is structural color. In all forms, Nancy just wants to show you that insects are beautiful animals that are fun to learn about. Nancy's hobbies include working on too many projects at once, video games, and art.

Are you interested in

Ecuador Eco Tours
HiveMind Entomology Workshops  (Pass Phrase: AAE)

Follow Nancy on:

A short haired man looking directly at the cameraJoe Ballenger is a geneticist currently studying what happens when crops fight weeds. As a child, he became fascinated with parasitoid wasps and worked on the viruses these wasps use on their hosts while in grad school. Today, he divides his time between doing science, climbing and cooking.
Follow Joe on:

A pink haired woman with an aspirator - or a bug collecting suction apparatus - hung around her neck Joanie Mars: While working on her undergrad degree at the University of Central Florida, Joanie did research, volunteering, and outreach in Marine Biology. She wanted to become a marine biologist, but then during her senior year she became fascinated by ants – amazed by their behavior, ecology, morphology, and evolution. She now has her master’s degree in entomology from the University of Georgia and is working on her PhD in entomology at Texas A&M where she researches fire ant decapitating flies, fire ants, and science. Joanie's hobbies include rock climbing, cosplay and macro photography. Her scientific interests include evolution, ants, parasites and science communication.
Follow Joanie on:

4 Responses to About Us

  1. Pingback: Site Updates! | Ask an Entomologist

  2. Pingback: What Is That Bug? Thank a Taxonomist! | Ask an Entomologist

  3. Pingback: Ask an Entomologist - The Garden Professors™

  4. shoesun28 says:
    September 15, 2015 at 10:45 pm

    Hello Joe and Nancy,

    My name is Susan and I am the content manager of Clapway.com, a US based online publication. I came across your blog and really enjoy the content you have on your site. We would like to discuss a potential collaboration with you. If you’d be interested in working with us, please shoot us an email to content@clapway.com.

    Looking forward to hearing from you.
    Best,

    Susan Xu
    Content Manager at Clapway
    195 Plymouth St #6/17
    Brooklyn, NY 11201
    sx@clapway.com

    Like

Comments are closed.