Research

I am a computational evolutionary biologist. My research program is focused on developing process-based statistical models and methods to answer questions about how life changes across space and time using molecular, geological, environmental, ecological, morphological, physiological, and other types of data. Rather than working on any particular taxonomic group or biological system, I work on conceptual evolutionary biological problems from across any (and, usually, many) of a broad variety of empirical systems that span multiple spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scales.

While I am interested in questions in evolutionary biology in general, my work is typically characterized by the following themes:

• 

  A phylogenetic --- or, more generally, an evolutionary graph --- perspective, in which questions are framed and answers are informed by the ancestor-descendent associations that relate a group of organisms to each other.

• 

  An explicit spatial --- or, more precisely, an historico-geographical --- perspective, where the physicial distributions of organisms, as well as the geographical connections between their populations, both in the present as well as the past, is an important explanatory principle.

• 

  The development of models that integrate microevolutionary processes or mechanisms (such as ecology, demographic structure, morphology, physiology, etc.) with macroevolutionary ones (such as speciation, biogeography, host-parasite dynamics, community assembly, etc.).