Welcome to the Young Lab web site. The lab is in the Department of Entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Research in the Young Lab of Systematic Entomology is focused on insect systematics/taxonomy, natural history and biodiversity, with tangents to ecology and population genetics as well as taxonomic surveys and agroecological entomology.

 We focus largely on the gross anatomical and morphological complexity of insects – not only as the primary means of characterizing and classifying them, but also for inferring taxonomic and evolutionary relationships. Taxonomic hypotheses serve as the foundation for developing the nomenclature and phylogenetic hypotheses underpinning virtually all modern biological research.