D. Timothy J. Littlewood is a Merit Researcher and currently Head of the Life Sciences Department at the Natural History Museum, London. His main research interests include: the systematics of platyhelminths (flatworms) and other phyla, particularly with a view to revealing evolutionary patterns associated with parasitism; the development and application of molecular tools for species diagnosis, life cycle completion and biodiversity assessment; and mitogenomics and phylogenomics pursued by means of next-generation sequencing.