Carla Penz

Carla Penz

Carla Penz at John T. Scott’s Spirit Gate (Photo by Phil DeVries)
Fields Comparative morphology
Institutions University of New Orleans
Alma mater University of Texas at Austin
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
Spouse Philip James DeVries (1997-present)

Carla Maria Penz PhD (born October 17, 1961) is a butterfly comparative morphologist and systematist. Her research also focuses on natural history and behavior, mostly of neotropical butterflies.

Biography

Carla Penz was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, first-born daughter of Rubem Paulo Penz and Isolde Renate Penz (née Seth). Through her father’s love for nature and in orchids in particular, she developed an interest in biology from an early age. Penz attended the Jesuit school Colégio Anchieta, where she was also encouraged to pursue a career in science. As an undergraduate at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), she volunteered at Museu Anchieta (a semi-independent division of the school) where she started to study butterflies. She continued to work at that museum during her Master of Science program at the same university.

Penz obtained her doctorate degree at the University of Texas at Austin. During that period she traveled to several countries for field and museum work, such as Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Brazil, and England where she spent time at Cambridge University and The Natural History Museum. She was funded by the National Science Foundation for post-doctoral work at the DeVries Laboratory at the University of Oregon where she also worked as an Instructor (1996-2000). She worked as a Curator of Lepidoptera (2000-2004) and Section Head of Invertebrate Zoology (2003-2004) at the Milwaukee Public Museum in Wisconsin. As of 2004 Penz is an Associate Professor at the University of New Orleans, where she continues to expand her work on butterflies. She is also a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History and the Milwaukee Public Museum, and an Associate Professor at PUC-RS, Brazil.

Along her career Penz has studied butterfly genetics, natural history, herbivore-plant interactions, wing morphology as related to flight , and phylogenetic systematics. Morphology is the main source of data for her work on phylogenetic systematics, a field of biology that focuses on the evolutionary diversification of living organisms. Penz’s research integrates morphological and evolutionary diversification, and also natural history and behavior of her study organisms.

Selected publications

References

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