Dr. Art Evans was born in Lancaster, California and attended Palmdale High School, where he graduated in 1975. He then studied at the California State University at Long Beach where he received his bachelor’s degree (1981) in entomology and masters degree (1984) in biology. Art spent three years in South Africa (1985-88) where he attended the University of Pretoria and earned his doctoral degree (1988) in entomology. 

Art has lived in Richmond for eight years working as an independent researcher, freelance writer, and photographer, popularizing insects and spiders in books, magazines, and newspapers.  His column, What’s Bugging You?, appears on the second Thursday of every month in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

He was the scientific coordinator of the Virginia BioBlitz in 2002 and 2003, as well as the Potomac Gorge BioBlitz in 2006. Each of these volunteer projects brought together Virginia scientists,

Dr. Evans' books are available for purchase in the VMNH Museum Store.

naturalists, and students to survey the plants and animals of Virginia. He was also the project manager of the first and only Richmond Insect Fair, an educational event celebrating all aspects of insects and entomology held at the 17th Street Market in 2003.

Art currently works for the Virginia Natural Heritage Program, a division of the Department of Conservation and Recreation.  This agency oversees sensitive species and habitats throughout the Commonwealth. He is also a Research Associate in the Entomology Department, Smithsonian Institution and the Department of Recent Invertebrates, Virginia Museum of Natural History. 

Art lectures widely on a variety of subjects, including arthropod natural history, scarab beetles, African wildlife, home and garden pests, insects in the classroom, cultural entomology, and monarch butterfly migration in California and Mexico. He has led several ecotours to monarch overwintering sites in California and Mexico, as well as other natural history trips to Florida and Kenya. 

Art has published 22 scientific papers on the systematics, biology and identification of scarab beetles, as well as over 100 popular articles and books on insects and spiders.  He was a contributing author and photographer to volume II of American Beetles, published by CRC Press in 2002. Art is co-author of An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles, with Charles Bellamy, published in soft cover by University of California Press (2000) and in Japanese by Springer-Verlag (2001).  He was a contributing writer for A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert, published by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and the University of California (1999).  He also coauthored two books on California beetles, Introduction to California Beetles (2004) and Field Guide to Beetles of California (2006), both published by University of California Press. Art was also coeditor and contributing writer for the volume on insects for Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia, which appeared in 2004. And he authored the three invertebrate volumes (insects, arachnids, crustaceans, mollusks, annelids) for the companion series, Grzimek’s Student Animal Life Resource, which appeared in 2005. His National Wildlife Foundation Field Guide to Insects and Spider of North America, published by Sterling Publishing Co., appeared in May of 2007.

Art’s latest book, What’s Bugging You? A fond look at animals we love to hate (University of Virginia Press, 2008) is a collection of his first 51 columns in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He is currently working on two more books, Introduction to Insects of Virginia and the Carolinas (University of Virginia Press), and Field Guide to Beetles of Eastern North America (Princeton University Press).