Mark was happily studying the flora of Washington’s Cascade Mountains as an undergrad when he noticed a stand of his favorite alpine fir trees dying. It turns out the cause was an invasive insect, the balsam woolly adelgid, and thus began his lifelong fascination with adelgids and other insects that feed on trees. After graduate studies on biological control of native bark beetles at the University of Washington and U.C. Berkeley, Mark moved to Ithaca and settled into studying forest ecology. Appointed an extension associate in the DNR in 2006, Mark began outreach on what have become a rogue’s gallery of invasive insects currently changing our forested landscape. His research program has led back to adelgids where his lab researches the biology and ecology of predators released for classical biological control of the hemlock woolly adelgid.
