Jim focuses on the systematics, evolutionary biology and ecology of parasitoid wasps. A major focus in the last few years has been on phylogenetic aspects of the evolution of interactions between parasitoid wasps and the symbiotic viruses they carry to suppress host immune systems. Taxonomically, he specializes on the family Braconidae. It is among the largest families of insects, including many species of economic importance as natural enemies of pest insects. He has focused his systematics research on the subfamilies Microgastrinae, Cardiochilinae, Rogadinae and related groups, emphasizing the taxa that parasitize lepidopteran larvae. This taxonomic work has also extended into collaborative studies on community ecology of parasitoids of caterpillars, and into producing user-friendly field guides to both the lepidopteran caterpillars and their braconid parasitoids.

An additional area of interest in his lab is the testing of various methods for analysis of morphological and molecular data for phylogeny estimation.

Representative and Recent Publications

Whitfield, J. B. 2002. Estimating the age of the polydnavirus/braconid wasp symbiosis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 99: 7508-7513.

Banks, J. C. and J. B. Whitfield. 2006. Dissecting the ancient rapid radiation of microgastrine wasp genera using additional nuclear genes. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 41: 690-703.

Whitfield, J. B. 2006. Revision of the nearctic species of the genus Pholetesor Mason (Hymenoptera: Braconidae). Zootaxa 1144: 1-94.

Whitfield, J. B. and P. J. Lockhart. 2007. Deciphering ancient rapid radiations. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 22: 258-265.

Whitfield, J. B. and K. Kjer. 2008. Ancient rapid radiations of insects: challenges for phylogenetic analysis. Annual Review of Entomology 53: 449-472.

Murphy, N., J. C. Banks, J. B. Whitfield and A. D. Austin. 2008. Phylogeny of the microgastroid complex of subfamilies of braconid parasitoid wasps (Hymenoptera) based on sequence data from seven genes, with an improved estimate of the time of origin of the lineage. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 47: 378-395.

Smith, M. A., Rodriguez, J. J., Whitfield, J. B., Janzen, D. H., Hallwachs, W., Deans, A.R. and Hebert, P. D. N. 2008. Extreme diversity of tropical parasitoid wasps exposed by iterative integration of natural history, DNA barcoding, morphology and collections. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 105: 12359-12364.

De Boer, J. G., P. J. Ode, L. E. M. Vet, J. B. Whitfield, Aaron K. Rendahl and G. E. Heimpel. 2008. Multiple locus complementary sex determination in the parasitoid Cotesia vestalis. Genetics (in press).

Whitfield, J. B., S. A. Cameron, D. H. Huson, and M. A. Steel. In press. Filtered Z-closure supernetworks for extracting and visualizing recurrent signals from incongruent gene trees. Systematic Biology.