Bob Behrstock, originally from the Midwest, was trained as a fisheries biologist in Northern California where he birded, taught, and curated a university fish museum. Subsequently, he moved to Houston, Texas, where he was based while leading birding tours for 19 years--primarily in Latin America. Bob spent the last several years performing faunal surveys as well as assessing birding trail sites and creating trail map text for two Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail Maps and the three subsequent Great Texas Wildlife Trails, as well as trails in Maryland, Virginia, and far Western Texas. An aggressive photographer, he's photographed dragonflies and butterflies along the Eastern seaboard and from the Florida Keys to Oregon, finding many state records and several U.S. records in the process. During the last four years, he's been a presenter and field trip leader at birding, butterfly and dragonfly festivals in Galveston, the Rio Grande Valley, and Southeast Arizona. Bob has authored or co-authored more than 30 popular and scientific papers concerning fishes, birds, dragonflies, and butterflies in the U.S. and Latin America, and prepared several of the family accounts for The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior. Hundreds of his bird and insect photos have been published in a variety of venues including advertising and packaging, calendars, newspapers, travel books, bird and insect field guides, CD-ROMs, and publications such as Audubon, Smithsonian, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Birding, WildBird, BBC Wildlife, and the Handbook of Birds of the World.
 

Dennis Paulson grew up in Miami, exposed to subtropical nature in all its glory while southern Florida was still largely unspoiled. He received his Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Miami in 1966 with a study of the dragonflies of southern Florida, and shortly thereafter he moved to Seattle, where he has lived ever since. He has been on the faculty of the University of Washington, and he just retired after 15 years of being the director of the Slater Museum of Natural History at the University of Puget Sound. Dennis has taught at four universities and continues to teach adult-education courses in many venues. He has also led nature tours and traveled on his own to all continents, and he has studied and photographed dragonflies worldwide and published many scientific papers on his favorite animals. He is an experienced photographer, with many photos published in magazines, books and interpretive displays.
Dennis' special interests include birds as well as dragonflies, and his published books include Shorebirds of the Pacific Northwest; Shorebirds of North America: The Photographic Guide; Alaska: The Ecotravellers' Wildlife Guide; and Dragonflies of Washington. Beyond these interests, he is a well-rounded naturalist with a broad knowledge of plants and animals of the world. He has visited the Lower Rio Grande Valley on numerous occasions and is excited about showing off its rich dragonfly fauna. Check out his web site at http:www.ups.edu/biology/UPSdragonflies.html.

Forrest Mitchell, Research entomologist, has been fascinated with insects since childhood.  This has translated into a career and appointment to a professorship at Texas A&M University and adjunct professorships at Oklahoma State University and Tarlelton State University.  While developing a means of cataloging dragonflies, he stumbled upon the scanning process.  Scanning of biological specimens is not a new idea or procedure.  Indeed, he watched a fellow scientist scanning leaves about two years before, but did not make the connection with doing the same to dragonflies and other insects until one June day in 1996.  The result was so pleasing that the Digital Dragonflies website was opened on 31 August that same year.  Since then, the site has grown and expanded into two other websites – the Digital Dragonfly Museum and the Damselflies of Texas.  The program has since published on the ecology and life history of dragonflies and is in the process of publishing a book illustrated with scans and images collected by the program over the years and as well as those contributed by other authors and photographers.

Richard Lehman is a life-long resident of Weslaco where he has been active in environmental, ecotourism, and community affairs for most of his life.

Richard was part of the team that developed the Valley Nature Center; he was director of the Frontera Audubon Center and began the initial development of that project. He was also the director of the Edinburg World Birding Center. This is where he planned and implemented the 6-acre native garden. In addition, he has worked extensively on the World Birding Center project and the Llano Grande portion in particular.

Currently, Richard is doing consulting work for the NABA International Butterfly Park in Mission

Dr. Sidney W. Dunkle is the author of “Dragonflies Through Binoculars”, A Field Guide to Dragonflies of North America”.  He has also written two other books on the Dragonflies and Damselflies of Florida, which are unfortunately out of print.  He has been doing research and photography of dragonflies and damselflies for over 30 years, and has written more than 50 scientific and popular articles.

Dr. Dunkle is also interested in nearly all other aspects of natural history, especially insect predators such as birds, which he tries to keep from diluting his focus on odonates too much… He has worked as a field biologist, ranger-naturalist, environmental consultant, and teacher, and is currently a Professor of Biology at Collin County Community College in Plano, Texas.

James Lasswell holds a Bachelor of Science in Botany and a Master in Aquatic Biology.  He is the program director for field research in the Entomology Department of the Texas Agriculture Experiment Station at TAMU in Stephenville, Texas.  He is the author and co-author of numerous journal articles and popular articles on dragonflies and other subjects.  James’ new “coffee table type book” on dragonflies, called “A Dazzle of Dragonflies”, will be released in April 2005.  He co-authored this book with Dr. Forrest Mitchell.