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Professor Emeritus
Natural History Museum of DenmarkUniversitetsparken 152100 København Ø
Office: 11, 2-4-441Phone: +45 353-21113Phone (Reception desk): +45 353-22222E-mail: npkristensen@snm.ku.dk
Insect anatomy and high-rank phylogeny. Lepidoptera anatomy and systematics, with specisl reference to 'basal' evolutionary lineages
My long-standing principal interests are Lepidoptera structure and evolution, as well as comparative anatomy and phylogeny of high-rank insect clades. My empirical research has largely focused on the structure and evolution of 'basal' Lepidoptera (i.e., those lineages that evolved in the first several splitting events that can be resolved from a study of the known fauna) and other basal endopterygotes. Ongoing projects include
1) A suite of ad hoc studies describing systematically/morphologically/biogeographically exciting newly discovered taxa of homoneurous moths).
2) A comprehensive structural/phylogenetic/taxonomic/biological treatment of the endemic New Zealand family Mnesarchaeidae. This small moth family is of outstanding interest, being an insect counterpart of ‘the tuatara case’ in ‘reptiles’ – with a N.Zealand endemic taxon being the sister group of a species-rich cosmopolitan taxon; in the mnesarchaeid case this sister group is the superfamily Hepialoidea. So far 14 mnesarchaeid species are known – half of them to be described in our forthcoming monograph. (With G.W. Gibbs, Victoria Univ., Wellington, and B. Wiegmann, N Carolina State Univ., Raleigh).
3) A review of the Afrotropical Micropterigidae, including the treatment of a still-undescribed ‘species swarm’ in Madagascar. (With D. Lees, NHM, London, G. W. Gibbs, Victoria Univ., Wellington and D. R. Davis, USNMNH, Smithsonian Institution).
4) A taxonomic review of the Old World Eriocraniidae, the first differentiated glossatan lineage and the only exclusively Holarctic family of homoneurous moths (With O. Karsholt, ZMUC, M. Mutanen, Univ, Oulu and M.Kozlov, Univ. Turku), supplemented with anatomical work on the female genitalia (with F. Hünefeld, Univ. Jena).
