Dr. D. Christopher Rogers is a research zoologist at the University of Kansas with the Kansas Biological Survey and is affiliated with the Biodiversity Institute, with numerous research projects all over the world. He received his PhD degree from the University of New England in Armidale, NSW, Australia. Christopher specializes in freshwater and terrestrial crustaceans (particularly Branchiopoda and Malacostraca) and the invertebrate fauna of seasonally astatic wetlands on a global scale. He has more than 150 peer-reviewed publications in crustacean
taxonomy and invertebrate ecology, as well as published popular and scientific field guides and identification manuals to freshwater invertebrates. Christopher is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Crustacean Biology and a founding member of the Southwest Association of Freshwater Invertebrate Taxonomists. He has been involved in aquatic invertebrate conservation efforts all over the world.

Dr. James H. Thorp is a professor and senior scientist at the University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS, United States). Prior to 2001, he was a distinguished professor and dean at Clarkson University, department chair and professor at the University of Louisville, associate professor and director of the Calder Ecology Center at Fordham University, and research ecologist at Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. He received his Baccalaureate from the University of Kansas and Masters and PhD degrees from North Carolina State. Prof. Thorp has been on the editorial board of three freshwater journals and is a former president of the International Society for River Science. His research interests run the gamut from organismal biology to community, ecosystem, and macrosystem ecology. While his research emphasizes aquatic invertebrates, he also studies fish ecology, especially food webs related. He has published more than 150 research articles and 10 books, including five volumes so far in the fourth edition of Thorp and Covich's Freshwater Invertebrates.