Year of Honorary Fellowship, 2021
Laurence Alfred Mound is an entomologist born in Willesden, London. He works mostly on the biology and systematics of Thysanoptera (thrips), an area in which he is considered a world authority, and has described over 640 thrips species and some 90 thrips genera.
He achieved the Diploma of Imperial College, London in Economic Entomology in 1958 and the Diploma of Tropical Agriculture from I.C.T.A. Trinidad in 1959. From 1959-1961 he was Entomologist to the Nigerian Federal Department of Agricultural Research, Ibadan, studying whitefly vectors of crop virus diseases, and from 1961-1964 Entomologist to Empire Cotton Growing Corporation stationed in Sudan studying whitefly effects on cotton lint. In 1994 he moved to Australia where he serves as Honorary Research Fellow, CSIRO Division of Entomology, Canberra.
Dr. Mound has vast experience over his career studying insects worldwide, including the U.S. National Museum in Washington, Frankfurt and Linz, Athens, India, China, New Zealand, and Tasmania to name just a few.
Dr. Mound is recognized as a leading authority on the taxonomy, phylogeny, and biology of the thrips. He published an important contribution on thrips in our geographic region in 1996 (with Rita Marullo), The Thrips of Central and South America: An Introduction (Insecta: Thysanoptera). He has developed the ecological concept of opportunism as it relates to thrips pest species, and his understanding of these aspects of thrips biology has led to successful integrated programs for management of thrips pests and tospoviruses vectored by seven species of thrips. Dr. Mound lectures widely including addresses at the Colombian Entomological Society, several international conferences on Thysanoptera and tospoviruses, the Brazilian Entomological Society.
