Posted on

The Coleopterists Society is pleased to announce two winners of the 2026 Ross Taylor Bell and Joyce Rockenbach Bell Research Grant! The awardees are:

Dr. Vinicius S. Ferreira for the project “Resolving the Calopteron complex: a revision of the largest New World Endemic Net-winged beetle genus (Elateroidea: Lycidae)”. The awardee will take important steps towards finalizing a taxonomic revision by dissecting and digitizing numerous primary type specimens at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (Paris, France).

Dr. Vinícius Ferreira at the Montana Entomology Collection and a dorsal habitus image of Calopteron textile Bourgeois, 1899.
Dr. Vinícius Ferreira at the Montana Entomology Collection and a dorsal habitus image of Calopteron textile Bourgeois, 1899.

Dr. Kyle Schnepp for the project “Phylogeny and classification of Melolonthinae (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae): a targeted enrichment approach”. This project involves using new molecular methods to reconstruct a phylogeny of the largest subfamily of scarab beetles to study their evolution, classification, and phylogeographic history.

Dr. Kyle Schnepp collecting in Madre de Dios, Peru and the melolonthinae Warwickia pilosa (Sanderson, 1939).
Dr. Kyle Schnepp collecting in Madre de Dios, Peru and the melolonthine Warwickia pilosa (Sanderson, 1939).

We would like to thank Joyce Bell for making this grant possible with her generous donation to The Coleopterists Society in memory of her husband, Ross Bell. This grant is awarded on April 23 rd , which would have been Ross’s 97 th birthday.