The introductions of non-native invasive insects pose incredible financial and ecological risks to the management and integrity of native ecosystems. For many of these pests, their first detections may be many years after their original establishments, and their regions of origin unknown. Such was the case with the introduction of the invasive European winter moth, Operophtera brumata, to the northeastern United States. By the time winter moth was first reported, it was already well established, defoliating large areas in the region. In order to better understand where winter moth was introduced from and when it might have first become established, Dr. Elkinton used his extensive network of colleagues in Europe and across North America – developed from his many years as a leading forest entomologist and ecologist – to obtain winter moth samples from Fennoscandia in the north to Tunisia in the south, from the Iberian peninsula in the west to the Ural mountains in the east – not to mention from the British Isles, Iceland, and eastern Siberia. In the process Dr. Elkinton showed that ecology is built upon the networks of collaboration, that new techniques and technologies should be embraced, and that to understand the ecological impacts of the pests we see today, we first need to understand their evolutionary histories. This work has provided invaluable insights into the biogeographic history of winter moth in Europe, the prevalence of serial invaders in forest entomology, and the dynamics of hybridization between a native species and a non-native invasive pest.
