Florida Museum of Natural History
Willmott Lab
Led by Keith Willmott · Florida Museum of Natural History (Lepidoptera)
What we study
The Willmott Lab studies butterfly diversity and systematics. Recent student projects review DNA barcoding in Lepidoptera and model the distributions of Euptychiina butterflies from museum and iNaturalist records; its papers describe new Neotropical species.
What working here is like
- Computational
- Other insects
- Coding required
- Projects
- 2
- Papers
- 5
Current projects
Modeling distributions of Euptychiina butterflies
The student gathered museum and iNaturalist records for Euptychiina butterflies, cleaned the data in QGIS, created buffered convex‑hull range maps in R, and uploaded them to a modeling app to produce bioclimatic distribution maps for use in biogeography and macroecology studies.
From the Spring 2025 UF Undergraduate Research Symposium · abstract book, p. 491
A Review of DNA Barcoding in Lepidoptera Studies
The study reviews how scientists use DNA barcoding to identify butterflies and moths. Students will gather published papers, organize them by family and purpose, and analyze trends in species counts and geographic use.
From the Spring 2025 UF Undergraduate Research Symposium · abstract book, p. 230
Summaries are written by AI in plain language from public symposium abstracts and may be imperfect.
Recent papers, explained
- Competition and habitat filtering shape Neotropical canopy butterfly communities across a rainfall seasonality gradient
2026 · Ecosphere
Tests whether competition or habitat filtering shapes butterfly communities across a rainfall gradient.
- Two new species in the Anteros chrysoprasta group from Ecuador (Lepidoptera: Riodinidae: Helicopini)
2026 · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
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- Sedge feeders: early-stage biology of five Satyrinae butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) associated with Cyperaceae in southeastern Peru
2026 · Studies on Neotropical Fauna and Environment
Describes life cycles of five sedge-feeding butterflies in Peru, finding sedges as rare host plants.
- A new satyrine butterfly from Amazonia and a survey of its androconial organs (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Satyrinae)
2026 · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
- Revisiting Colobura (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae): Using integrative taxonomy to identify a new species, C. cryptica sp. nov., and revise geographic boundaries
2026 · Zootaxa
Plain-language summaries are AI-written and reviewed by us; check the paper for details.
How to reach out
Keith Willmott hasn't set up this page yet. Their UF Scholars profile lists their publications.