Department Staff
Derek S. Sikes
Curator of Insects / Assistant Professor of Entomology
University of Alaska Museum
907 Yukon Dr.
University of Alaska
Fairbanks, Alaska 99775
email: dsikes 'at' alaska.edu
phone: 474-6278
fax: 474-5469
Sikes Lab Website
Derek Sikes was hired as the curator of insects at the University of Alaska Museum in July 2006. He is an advocate of the study and protection of arthropod, specifically beetle, biodiversity. His early training included large-scale beetle inventory and community ecology projects in addition to traditional alpha taxonomy and morphological based phylogenetics. He has since combined traditional with modern molecular phylogenetic approaches and has happily dived into the work of documenting the (non-marine) Arthropod fauna of Alaska.
University of Alaska Museum
907 Yukon Dr.
University of Alaska
Fairbanks, Alaska 99775
email: dsikes 'at' alaska.edu
phone: 474-6278
fax: 474-5469
Sikes Lab Website
Derek Sikes was hired as the curator of insects at the University of Alaska Museum in July 2006. He is an advocate of the study and protection of arthropod, specifically beetle, biodiversity. His early training included large-scale beetle inventory and community ecology projects in addition to traditional alpha taxonomy and morphological based phylogenetics. He has since combined traditional with modern molecular phylogenetic approaches and has happily dived into the work of documenting the (non-marine) Arthropod fauna of Alaska.
Jozef Slowik
UAM Insect Collection Curatorial Assistant
University of Alaska Museum
907 Yukon Dr.
University of Alaska
Fairbanks, Alaska 99775
slowspider 'at' gmail.com
Joey Slowik began work as a graduate student in the MS program in the Fall of 2008. He worked as a curatorial assistant in the Arachnid Collection under Dr. Paula Cushing of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science from 2004-2007. Joey's focus is on spider taxonomy, life history, faunistics, and phylogeny, specifically the spider families Linyphiidae and Lycosidae.
Brandi Fleshman
UAM Insect Collection Volunteer
University of Alaska Museum
907 Yukon Dr.
University of Alaska
Fairbanks, Alaska 99775
fsbt2 'at' uaf.edu
EPSCoR Undergraduate Research Award, summer 2007 and Independent Research (1 term) student The Spider Fauna of Alaska. Summer 2007+. Brandi started the MS program in the spring of 2009 and in addition to finishing her work with updating the spider checklist for the state she will focus on a spider that mimics ants (Micaria spp.) to test whether this is a case of Batesian mimicry among other questions.
Brandi began work in the UAM Insect lab as a volunteer auto-montage photographer. She has since begun work on updating the checklist of Alaskan spiders. To date (Nov 2007) she has increased the count from 247 as listed on the most recently published checklist (Chamberlin 1947) to 464 with 14+ new state records.
Kenelem W. Philip
UAM Insect Collection Research Associate (1971-present)
1590 North Becker Ridge Road
Fairbanks, AK 99709-2705
Ken has been working on the butterfly fauna of Alaska and the circumpolar north since the 1966. Ken founded the Alaska Lepidoptera Survey in 1970 and has been running it ever since. The ALS collection is the second largest North American arctic butterfly collection in the world (behind the CNC). A field guide to the Alaskan butteflies is in progress.
