Entomologist, aspiring naturalist, iNaturalist stan, & director of science and research at Discover Life in America.

I'm familiar with many of the common and interesting insects and plants of East Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains area and I'm learning to identify more every day through iNaturalist. I have a project in my tiny Knoxville neighborhood with more than 1,400 species (Life in Mount Pleasant)!

Smokies ATBI: At DLiA, we document the diversity of life in Great Smoky Mountains National Park through the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI). I keep up with new observations in the Smokies and tag those that represent new taxon records for the Park: 220 and counting. So far, Park visitors have made 180K observations of 6,600 species (that's 30% of the 22K species documented in GSMNP!). That's fantastic! But we can do even better!

• Get involved with the Smokies ATBI
• Identify Smokies arthropods on iNat
• Identify specimens from the GSMNP natural history collection: our current priorities

Gear: I'm big into macro photography, especially of insects, but I'm also lazy. I take nearly all of my photos with an old Samsung Galaxy S10 with this 15x clip-on macro lens for most insects or this one for really close-up things, like bryophytes. These macros are both cheap and easy to replace when I frequently lose them in the field. I love the camera (and GPS) on this particular phone model and find it super convenient to take a gazillion georeferenced photos in the field, then crop and upload them from home. No tripod, no non-natural, external lighting (except a headlamp for night photography). I also always carry this UV flashlight.

Permits: Unless otherwise noted, any specimen I collect within GSMNP is under NPS research permit study number GRSM-00069. Do not collect insects or other material from national parks or other restricted areas without a valid research permit!

Please feel free to message or email me (will@dlia.org).

iNat links:

• Smokies ATBI project - Great Smoky Mountains NP
• Life in Mount Pleasant - my neighborhood project
• Smokies Most Wanted priorities - DLiA's iNat-based scavenger hunt in the Smokies
• DLiA's bioblitzes with TVA
• Tennessee RiverLine - iNat projects along the 652 miles of the Tennessee River
• my contributions to the Global Biotic Interactions database (GLOBI)

More information:

• Discover Life in America
• Smokies ATBI taxa tally and priority taxa
• Smokies Most Wanted
• iScience
• My outdated website

Some of my favorite projects:

• Galls of North America
• Leafminers of North America
• Entomopathogenic Fungi
• Parasitic Apocrita of America
• LGBTQ+ Naturalists
• Megachile bee leaf cuts
• Pollinator Associations
• Ground Nesting Bees

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