Jessica Ware is an entomologist and associate curator in invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History, where she is also an assistant professor at the Richard Gilder Graduate School. She is the president of the Worldwide Dragonfly Association and vice president of the Entomological Society of America.

Ware researches how insects adapt physically and behaviorally with respect to their reproductive, social and flight habits. Her lab studies dragonflies, damselflies, termites, cockroaches and mantises.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in zoology at the University of British Columbia and her Ph.D. at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Ware was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the AMNH and an associate professor of evolutionary biology at Rutgers University, Newark, where she taught until rejoining AMNH in 2019.

She was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers by the U.S. government in 2019 for her work on insect evolution. 

Courtesy of Jessica Ware

Pronouns: She/her/hers

Expertise: Entomology, evolutionary biology, insect behavior

Location: Cranbury, N.J.

Email: jware@amnh.org 

Phone: (732) 789-7264

Twitter: @JessicaLWareLab 

Heard on Weekend Edition: “Why Do We Only See Dragonflies In The Summer?”