The systematic study of the Heteroptera (true bugs), with 40,000 species worldwide, is the focus of my work. In 2003 I began work on a large-scale Planetary Biodiversity Inventories award from the NSF in collaboration with Australian heteropterist Gerry Cassis. This project has focused on the subfamilies Orthotylinae and Phylinae and their hosts, particularly the poorly-known faunas of Australia and South Africa, and the concommitant training of students and postdocs. To produce a better-documented theory of family-level phylogenetic relationships for the true bugs, I have collected and preserved specimens of Heteroptera for DNA sequencing in concert with fieldwork in Australia and South Africa. Sequencing, done in cooperation with Ward Wheeler of the AMNH, and collaboration with other colleagues, has resulted in papers on family-level relationships in the Cimicomorpha and Pentatomoidea. Recently, I collaborated with colleagues in the description of a new family of true bugs, Curaliidae, from the southern United States.