Elected: 2004
Discipline: Organismal and Environmental Biology
Dr Mark Shaw
Honorary Research Associate, National Museums Scotland
Dr Mark R. Shaw is a taxonomist working on a large group, Ichneumonoidea, of western Palaearctic parasitoid wasps with a particular interest in their biology and host associations. Trained as a chemist, he switched to entomology, researching parasitoid wasps at Manchester University and then Reading University before joining the then Royal Museum of Scotland (subsequently National Museums of Scotland) in 1980, becoming Keeper of Natural History [zoology] in 1983 then Keeper of Geology & Zoology (later Natural Science) until retiring in 2005. Subsequently as an Honorary Research Associate at NMS he continues to build the research collection of parasitoid wasps, with a particular effort on rearing them from their hosts, and to publish on their taxonomy and biology. Field entomology tends to dominate travel planning, but other interests include gardening, theatre and family life in general.