A Festschrift for Stephen L. Wood

We intended this Festschrift as a celebration of Dr. Stephen L. Wood’s 85th birthday. Sadly Dr. Wood past away a little before his 85th birthday thus this volume pays tribute to his life’s contribution to the study of bark and ambrosia beetles, which is summarized in the next article by Donald Bright. We arranged the volume geographically, starting with taxonomy of North American scolytines, followed by articles on new species introductions, biology, phylogeny. Th e articles treat species throughout the world, which refl ects Dr. Wood’s breadth of taxonomic knowledge. Th e contributing authors also refl ect worldwide taxonomic expertise. Dr. Wood personally infl uenced and trained three generations of scolytine taxonomists, including some of these authors. He left a lasting impression on the careers of several of us, which we relay below. Donald E. Bright: I fi rst met Steve in 1957 while I was serving in the U. S. Army. Previously, I had been attending Colorado A & M College (now Colorado State University) where I met T. O. (Ted) Th atcher, a professor in the Department of Entomology. Ted became a friend in addition to an advisor and mentor. He mentioned that his brother-in-law was interested in bark beetles and had just accepted a position at BYU. During my Army service, I was fortunate to be stationed at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah and I took the fi rst opportunity I had to visit Steve at BYU. During the next two years, I, often with Steve, collected throughout Utah. I also was able to occasionally take my specimens to BYU to have Steve check my identifi cations. I especially remember one trip to the La Sal Mountains in southern Utah to collect a bark beetle species, Pityoborus secundus Blackman, known at that time from a few specimens from that one locality. On the 4th of July, 1958, Steve and I drove to the La Sal Mountains in my ZooKeys 56: 1–5 (2010)