DAVID BRITTON
David currently works as an entomologist in the area of plant health surveillance, based in Cairns with the Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy (Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment). He has been an entomologist for as long as he can remember and has diverse experience and interests which has covered physiology, behaviour, chemical and nutritional ecology, community ecology, conservation biology, insect life-histories, pest surveillance and monitoring, and management of pest insects. Much of this work has included Lepidoptera as the group of interest.
His education included a series of degrees from University of Melbourne, La Trobe University, and the University of New England before he quite sensibly decided to part ways with the university system and get an actual job. This job was a long stint as entomology collection manager at the Australian Museum, and a shorter stint as the manager of the natural history collections at the Museum. He then decided on a change of scenery, heading north to his current location to work in a more tropical environment. David amassed a private collection from around 1988 to 2015 of over 10,000 specimens, primarily Lepidoptera from south-eastern Australia, but also moths and butterflies from South Africa, Arizona and Papua New Guinea.
This has been donated to the Australian Museum. While not claiming to have any major expertise with any group of Lepidoptera or indeed other groups of insects, he does have a fondness for the Lithosiini and a very broad knowledge of entomology in general.