Allan Showler is a research entomologist for the USDA-ARS in Texas and
works on cotton insect pests. Dr. Showler was formerly
the Coordinator for the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nation's
Emergency Prevention System (EMPRES) Program (desert locust component) for the Central
Region (Djibouti, Egypt, Eriteria, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, and Yeman. In
this capacity, Dr. Showler supervised an interantional staff who were posted throughout
the Central Region. Before joining the FAO in early 1997, Showler worked at USAID
for ten years; he has been involved with locust control in Africa and Asia since the
height of the 1986-1989 locust plague, the successful New World screwworm fly eradication
program in North Africa, and environmental assessment for the classical biological control
of the leucaena psyllid in southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, among other
activities. Showler, a native of Sacramento, had his first international experience as a
Peace Corps Volunteer in Tunisia where he learned to speak Arabic. His B.S. and M.S.
degrees in entomology and crop protection are from the University of California at Davis,
and he earned his Ph.D. in 1987 by unraveling sugarcane ecology at Louisiana State
University's department of entomology where he also studied the territorial dynamics of
the imported fire ant using radiotracers and neutron activation analysis. Showler has
worked in more than 30 countries, and was married to his wife, Yodit, in Asmara, Eritrea.
They have a son, Elias, born in Yemen in 1999.
The views expressed in this chapter are those of the author and not necessarily those
of FAO.
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Posted: Sunday 18, February, 1996, updated 9 March, 2001
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