Schlinger Trust
The Schlinger Trust manages our philanthropic donations in Diptera (flies, mosquitoes and , gnats), and is named after The Schlinger Foundation, the first agency to donate in this scientific area.
The Schlinger Foundation makes funds available for entomology and arachnology (the study of spiders). Based in California, it was established by Professor Evert Schlinger, an academic entomologist at the University of California. Evert’s grandfather was one of the founders of United Parcel Service, and Evert’s research interests were in systematic entomology, especially spider-killing flies of the family Acroceridae, and in integrated pest management. The Foundation has established five endowed chairs, four to institutions in California (arachnology and dipterology at the California Academy of Science; systematic entomology at the University of California, Davis; systematic entomology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History) and, in 2004, a chair in dipterology at the Australian National Insect Collection in Canberra.
David Yeates got to know Evert while on a postdoctoral fellowship at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, in the early 1990’s. The endowment fund is used to support the research of Dr David Yeates, Schlinger Curator of Diptera at ANIC. David conducts research on the taxonomy and biogeography of Australian Diptera and the evolution of flies and insects more generally. He teaches in the undergraduate curriculum at the Australian National University and supervises postgraduate students.
David K. McAlpine Grant Scheme
Dr David McAlpine is a systematic entomologist who specialises in Australian Diptera, focussing most of his career on acalyptrate flies (signal flies, vinegar flies, true fruit flies and others). He was employed as a scientist at the Australian Museum in Sydney from 1958 until 1994, and stayed on as a post-retirement fellow until 2019.
Most of what we know about the diversity and systematics of this very large group of flies was contributed by David throughout his very productive career. In 2021 David made a significant and very generous donation to the Schlinger Trust to enable us to award a grant to study acalyptrate flies in his honour - the David K. McAlpine Grant Scheme.
Elwood and Hannah Zimmerman Trust
The Zimmerman Trust supports systematic research of weevils (Curculionoidea) at the Australian National Insect Collection, CSIRO, in Canberra. It was established in 1995 with a deed of gift by Elwood Zimmerman, who had dedicated his life and entomological career to the taxonomic study of weevils in the Pacific region and retired to Australia in 1972, where he shifted focus from Hawaiian weevils to the Australian ones. Matching funds from CSIRO and, after Zimmie's and Hannah's deaths, a large bequest from their estate built up the Zimmerman Trust to the point where it is able to support a research fellow, a technician and, from time to time, a postdoctoral researcher in weevil systematics.
In 1997 Dr Rolf Oberprieler was appointed as the first Zimmerman Fellow to continue Zimmie's work on the Australian weevil fauna. His research spans the documentation of the Australian weevils in various forms as well as their classification and phylogenetic relationships, to which end he participates in some international projects on the phylogeny and evolutionary history of weevils as a whole. He also conducts research into particular taxa of Australian weevils of economic importance in agriculture, forestry and biosecurity.
- Research on Beetles
- See staff listing for contact details of David Yeates and Rolf Oberprieler