About Me
I'm a postdoc at the American Museum of Natural History working with Frank Burbrink on phenotypic diversification in snakes. Previously, I worked on the phylogenetics and diversification of geckos during my PhD with Jim McGuire and my Masters with Aaron Bauer.
My research interests include:
- Phylogenetics/Phylogenomics
- Comparative phylogenetics
- Macroevolution
- Biogeography
My research interests include:
- Phylogenetics/Phylogenomics
- Comparative phylogenetics
- Macroevolution
- Biogeography
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Featured Research
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Ecomorphological diversification of snakes
For the last two years, I have been working at the American Museum of Natural History with Frank Burbrink on the phenotypic evolution of unique group of snakes, the pseudoxyrhophiine lamprophiids of Madagascar. More simply, the Malagasy gemsnakes. I've made the transition from mostly phylogenomic work to working with high-res micro CT scans to examine ecomorphological diversification. We've found that while the Malagasy gemsnakes have generated an astounding degree of ecological diversity, they've managed to replicate phenotypes seen elsewhere in unrelated colubroids (advanced snakes). Australasian gecko phylogenomics
The first chapter of my dissertation just came out in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. Here, we looked at the entirety of the Diplodactyloidea, the group of geckos that includes pygopods and the New Caledonian radiation, using a massive phylogenomic dataset. We implemented over 4,000 Ultraconserved Elements to fully resolve relationships in this clade of over 200 . species. Comparisons of topological metrics support that this is the most well-supported phylogenetic estimate for this clade and that the relationships recovered here differ markedly from those proposed in earlier, Sanger-based, molecular studies. Divergence dating supports multiple mid-Cenozoic over-water dispersal events into Oceania but fails to support any mass extinction events, something that has been proposed previously. 
Map of Oceania with species counts for each of the three diplodactyloid families.
New Caledonian gecko diversification
My interest in herpetology began with my Masters at Villanova University with Aaron Bauer. I had the good fortune of working on the phylogenetics of New Caledonian diplodactylid geckos, a diverse radiation of 36 described species. Well, that study is finally out! We present a revised phylogeny using a multilocus dataset implementing multispecies coalescent methods. Turns out this group is very young, much younger than previously thought and probably dispersed to New Caledonia sometime during the Miocene. We also demonstrate that this clade experienced rapid initial speciation followed by a gradual slow down. |
Phylogenies of the Diplodactyloidea based on 4,268 UCEs. Red tips indicate discordant placements between the multispecies coalescent and concatenation. Left: Timetree from MCMCtree constrained on the species tree topology from ASTRAL. Right: Concatenated RAxML phylogram.
Timetree from *BEAST for the New Caledonian clade. Note the young crown age.
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