Peter T Oboyski , PhD

Research Interests

My research focuses broadly on the patterns and processes of diversification using island arthropod communities as models. My dissertation research in the EvoLab at UC Berkeley on the ecology, systematics, and evolution of Hawaiian Cydia moths (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) showed that these endemic species (eight of which I described as new) diversified through a combination of host-plant shifts followed by filling of similar niches across the main Hawaiian Islands. Other genera of Hawaiian Tortricidae, such as Pararrhaptica and Spheterista, have similarly radiated in the islands, while some such as Cryptophlebia have not. Why do some lineages diversify while others do not? The drivers of diversification likely include the interaction of factors operating on at least three different levels: Carrying capacity governed by species-area relationships, landscape age, and habitat heterogeneity; community assembly processes including ecological filtering, competitive interactions, ecological opportunity, and reciprical evolution; and lineage-specific traits such as lineage age, bottlenecks, canalization, character lability, and genetic legacy. I continue to persue this question on a broader scale to include several families of Pacific Islands Lepidoptera in the Hawaiian, Marquesas, and Society Islands in collaboration with a survey of the Terrestrial Arthropods of French Polynesia and the Moorea BioCode Project. I am also interested in the chemical ecology of insect/host-plant interactions and the role of mate-recognition pheromones in species divergence, and host-parasitoid dynamics.

Teaching & Outreach

My teaching experience ranges from outreach presentations at public schools and on-campus events to entomology laboratory classes to teaching an undergraduate senior thesis course. In association with entomology collections at Oregon State University, the USGS Biological Resources Division in Hawaii, and the Essig Museum of Entomology at UC Berkeley I have met with countless K-12 school groups and the general public to lead discussions and conduct hands-on activities relating to insect diversity, ecology, and conservation. For three years I taught insect identification for the forest entomology class at Oregon State University and general entomology lab for a year at UC Berkeley. I have taught general biology lab and spent a year as a GK-12 teaching fellow introducing high school students to concepts in science and biological diversity. I have mentored undergraduates as a teaching assistant for an island biology course on the island of Moorea in French Polynesia. And I spent two years guiding senior environmental science majors through their thesis projects, first as a teaching assistant, then as the lead instructor for the course. In both classes I guided students through the design, data collection, analysis, and presentation of their independent projects. I have also mentored over a half-dozen undergraduate apprentices in the field and laboratory as part of my own research, teaching them field collection and molecular genetic techniques. And as part of improving graduate student education I have organized and presented workshops on Lepidoptera, Data Management and Relational Databases, and Morphological Techinques in Entomology.

Online Resources & Databases

As a means to organize information for my own needs I have compiled an online searchable database and photo gallery of the Lepidoptera of French Polynesia and an online resource for Hawaiian Tortricidae. I have also databased and updated species names from Swezey's 1954 Forest Entomology in Hawaii with plans to database other literature references to aid in ecological and invasive species research regarding Hawaiian Insect-Plant relationships. And I have written an MS Excel Add-In (visual basic macro script) that converts a matrix data to columns.

Publications

Banko PC, Oboyski PT, Slotterback JW, et al. 2002. Availability of food resources, distribution of invasive species, and conservation of a Hawaiian bird along a gradient of elevation. Journal of Biogeography 29(5-6):789-808 (pdf)

Brenner GJ, Oboyski PT, Banko PC. 2002. Parasitism of Cydia spp. (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) on Sophora chrysophylla (Fabaceae) along an elevation gradient of dry subalpine forest on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Pan-Pacific Entomologist 78(2):101-109 (pdf)

Oboyski PT, Slotterback JW, Banko PC. 2004. Differential parasitism of seed-feeding Cydia (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) by native and alien wasp species relative to elevation in subalpine Sophora (Fabaceae) forests on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Journal of Insect Conservation 8(2-3): 229- 240 (pdf)

Paynter, Q, Gourlay AH, Oboyski PT, Fowler SV, Hill RL, Withers TM, Parish H, and Hona S. 2008. Why did specificity testing fail to predict the field host-range of the gorse pod moth in New Zealand? Biological Control 46:453-462 (pdf)

Last modified December 2011