Michelle at Pico de Orizaba in Veracruz Mexico, March 2009.
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Michelle Massa is a full-time Biology instructor at South Texas College in Weslaco, Texas. Her training is in molecular biology and entomology, but she teaches general biology as well as anatomy and physiology. Originally introduced by friends to scarab beetles, she has developed a fondness for the jewel scarabs of the genus Chrysina. In her spare time she enjoys traveling to cloud forests, oak/pine forests, and other Chrysina habitats to collect these beautiful beetles to add to her own collection as well as the collection she has started for the college. She also conducts research on these beetles, including phylogenetic analyses based on genitalic dissection and DNA anaysis especially for taxonomically problematic groups such as C. adelaida, C. resplendens, and C. misteca. She has begun to work on a book along with a couple of co-authors for identification of Chrysina beetles.
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