Ross Taylor Bell and Joyce Rockenbach Bell Research Grant

The Coleopterists Society invites any Society Member to submit a proposal for the Ross Taylor Bell and Joyce Rockenbach Bell Research Grant. The awardee will have an outstanding proposal for beetle research whose work would otherwise not be funded. Proposals will be favored if they involve beetle taxonomy/systematics.

Grant Details:

  1. Eligibility: Must be a member in good standing of The Coleopterists Society.
  2. Allowed Requests: Proposals will be considered for costs associated with research concerning beetles (including but not limited to: travel for field work, expendable materials, buying time on analytical equipment, travel to study/curate key museum collections, and publication costs for The Coleopterists Bulletin). Salary for the applicant is not allowable. The Coleopterists Society will provide the grant recipient with research funding only (all official/legal permissions and/or permits for fieldwork are the responsibility of the awardee).
  3. Award: One grant will be awarded for $5,000. The grant funds must be used within one year of receiving the grant or the unused portion returned to the Coleopterists Society. Award recipients will submit a short statement of completion of funded research (a paragraph) to the Secretary of The Coleopterists Society and may be invited to give a short oral report at The Coleopterists Society annual general meeting. It is expected that the awardee will acknowledge support from The Coleopterists Society Ross Taylor Bell and Joyce Rockenbach Bell Research Grant in any resulting publications.
  4. Applications: Include (single-spaced 12-point Times font, 1-inch margins):

i. Two pages (US letter sized) including the description of the specific research activity to be funded by the Ross Taylor Bell and Joyce Rockenbach Bell Research Grant, and justification for the proposed research.

ii. One page (US letter sized) detailed budget and explanation of justification for the requested funds. The budget must be for precisely $5,000 (all budgeted funds must be converted to USD).

iii. Cited references, included on a separate page(s).

iv. A short (1–2 paragraph) statement of current funding that justifies the need for this grant. The applicant should demonstrate that their research project would not otherwise be funded through any other grants or institutional support they have secured.

v. A short (one paragraph) statement detailing where beetle specimens acquired during the course of the research will be deposited. Specimens should be deposited in an institutional collection with a long-term directive for archival preservation of insect specimens and a good record of making specimens in their collection available to the international scientific community.

vi. Confirmation that the awardee accepts responsibility for determining need and acquiring all collecting and/or export permits.

Please email applications to the chair of the Ross Taylor Bell and Joyce Rockenbach Bell Research Grant committee:

Dr. Andrew Smith
Canadian Museum of Nature
Email (replace “(AT)” with “@”): asmith(AT)nature.ca

Applications due: 1 March

 

Previous Awardees:

2024 – Héctor Jaime Gasca Álvarez and Paul Skelley. “A survey of the pleasing fungus beetles (Coleoptera: Erotylidae: Erotylinae) of Colombia”.

Marianna Simões. “Towards a stable classification of Cassidini Chapuis (Chrysomelidae: Cassidinae) using low-coverage whole genome sequencing”

2023 – Lawrence Kirkendall and Thomas Atkinson. “Synopsis of the Platypodinae of Brazil (Coleoptera: Curculionidae)”

            Cristian Beza-Beza. “Curation and study of the personal collection of Pedro Reyes-Castillo at the Colección Entomológica del Instituto de Ecología (IEXA): continuing the legacy of biodiversity research in Passalidae”

2022 – Sara Rivera and Luiz Felipe Lima da Silveira. “Comprehensive Phylogeny of the Lampyrid Subfamily Photurinae and Implications for the Evolution of Predatory Fireflies”

2021 – Scott Gilmore. “Creation of Pictorial Keys to the Elateridae of British Columbia”

2020 – Marcin Kamiński and Ryan Lumen. “Unraveling the diversity of Helopinina Latreille (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae): an illustrated catalogue of the subtribe and initial taxonomic revision”