Research Interests
Throughout my research career I have focused on the question: How does biological diversity wax and wane through Earth’s history over millions of years, and how does it relate to external forces such as environment or ecology? My main research objective is in identifying underlying evolutionary processes and driving factors in the evolution of biodiversity, including biological traits such as form and function.
Key to accomplishing my research goal is my approach of applying advanced phylogenetic comparative methods on interdisciplinary datasets from various areas of quantitative organismal biology including palaeobiology, biodiversity, biomechanics, morphometrics, ecology and biogeography.
Evolutionary BiomechanicsStudies of biomechanical evolution assumes that biomechanical traits are under evolutionary selection. However, it is rarely the case that selection on biomechanical traits is explicitly studied. Are biomechanical traits actually under direct selection? Can biomechanical traits be explained by ecological, behavioural or environmental traits – in which case, does selection work on the biomechanics or the correlated variables, thereby one inducing changes in the other? I work within a phylogenetic framework to detect signatures of exceptional functional adaptations, and test statistically whether environmental variables can account for those adaptations.
Diversification of dinosaurs
I, along with Dr Chris Venditti and Prof Mike Benton, have studied how new species of dinosaurs appear through time using a phylogenetic statistical approach. We found that dinosaurs were not speciating as fast as they were going extinct, implying that dinosaurs were undergoing a long-term decline before the asteroid impact at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (KPg) boundary 66 million years ago (Mya) (Fig on right). The two exceptions are the Cretaceous clades Hadrosauriformes and Ceratopsidae, which show steady or rapid increases in net speciation per Myr.
The dynamics of extinctions through time
My new appointment as PDRA with Dr Chris Venditti (University of Reading) funded by The Leverhulme Trust will be focusing on developing and applying phylogenetic methods to detect signatures of mass extinctions (compared to background extinctions), if certain traits or combination of traits determine extinction or survivorship, and if mass extinctions alter the course of evolution and if so, how?
