Aaron Goodman

• PhD
• American Museum of Natural History

Naraoiids are nektaspidid arthropods that display two exoskeletal shields, typically lack thoracic tergites, and have an exceptional Cambrian diversity. Despite their predominantly Cambrian fossil record, Naraoia species have been documented in deposits as young as the late Silurian (Pridoli). At present, only one specimen of the Silurian taxon-Nar...

Naraoiids are nektaspidid arthropods that display two exoskeletal shields, typically lack thoracic tergites, and have an exceptional Cambrian diversity. Despite their predominantly Cambrian fossil record, Naraoia species have been documented in deposits as young as the late Silurian (Pridoli). At present, only one specimen of the Silurian taxon— Na...

The striped emeralds ( Somatochlora Selys) are a Holarctic group of medium‐sized metallic green dragonflies that mainly inhabit bogs and seepages, alpine streams, lakes, channels and lowland brooks. With 42 species they are the most diverse genus within Corduliidae (Odonata: Anisoptera). Systematic, taxonomic and biogeographic resolution within Som...

Neurocordulia, commonly called shadowdragons, are crepuscular dragonflies, flying mainly at dusk. The genus comprises seven species, which occur across the eastern part of Canada and the United States. Here, we used targeted enrichment probes to sequence ~1000 loci for all specimens of each species, allowing for the first phylogenetic assessment of...

Human alteration of natural environments and habitats is a major driver of species decline. However, a handful of species thrive in human altered environments. The biology, distribution, population structure and molecular adaptations enabling certain species to thrive in human-altered habitats are not well understood. Here, we evaluate the populati...

Nannothemis bella Uhler, 1857 (Odonata: Libellulidae), the smallest dragonfly in North America, inhabit bogs and sedge fens across their distribution, spanning from Quebec (Canada) south to Florida and west to Minnesota and Louisiana (USA). While common in the northern part of their range, N. bella is of conservation concern in the southern populat...

Mountains and islands are both model systems for studying the biogeography of diversification and population fragmentation. Aotearoa is an excellent location to study both phenomena due to alpine emergence and oceanic separation. While it would be expected that separation across Te Moana o Raukawa and elevation gradients are major barriers to gene...

Disjunct biogeographic patterns of similar species remain enigmatic within evolutionary biology. Disparate distributions typically reflect species responses to major historical events including past climate change, tectonics, dispersal, and local extinction. Paleo-ecological niche modeling (PaleoENM) has proven useful in inferring the causes of dis...

The use of gDNAs isolated from museum specimens for high throughput sequencing, especially targeted sequencing in the context of phylogenetics, is a common practice. Yet, little understanding has been focused on comparing the quality of DNA and results of sequencing museum DNAs. Dragonflies and damselflies are ubiquitous in freshwater ecosystems an...

Intensity and severity of bushfires in Australia have increased over the past few decades due to climate change, threatening habitat loss for numerous species. Although the impact of bushfires on vertebrates is well‐documented, the corresponding effects on insect taxa are rarely examined, although they are responsible for key ecosystem functions an...

The advent of community-science databases in conjunction with museum specimen locality information has exponentially increased the power and accuracy of ecological niche modeling (ENM). Increased occurrence data has provided colossal potential to understand the distributions of lesser known or endangered species, including arthropods. Although nich...

The arboreal Neotropical “thorellii” clade of Centruroides Marx, 1890, bark scorpions (Buthidae C.L. Koch, 1837) is revised, using a novel approach to species delimitation. A phylogenetic analysis, based on 112 morphological characters and 1078 aligned DNA nucleotides from the mitochondrial Cytochrome c Oxidase Subunit I (COI) gene, provided the fr...

Fragmented and degraded DNA is pervasive among museum specimens, hindering molecular phylogenetics and species identification. Mini-barcodes, 200–300-base-pair (bp) fragments of barcoding genes, have proven effective for species-level identification of specimens from which complete barcodes cannot be obtained in many groups, but have yet to be test...

• Leaf mimesis is the most common form of predator avoidance displayed by neotropical katydids. Such camouflage is expressed through various body and colour forms to resemble different leaf shapes within the rainforest. The objective of this work was to determine if roosting katydids select vegetation the same colour as their body during the day, a...

Species in the scorpion genus Centruroides (Scorpiones: Buthidae) are good candidates for the study of ecological niche partitioning because of their habitat plasticity, widespread geographic distribution, and presence of cryptic species. Currently, three species belonging to three subgroups of Centruroides are distributed along the Isthmus of Tehu...

A specimen of Masticophis lateralis (Hallowell, 1853) was found and photographed in the outskirts of San Juanico Bay, Baja California Sur, Mexico. This record fills in a gap of the distribution of this species along both coasts of Baja California Sur.