The family level relationships between salamanders have been stable for decades, but the divergence estimates between major clades and the lower-level relationships have been more contentious. What started as a rotation project expanded to generating the largest time-calibrated salamander phylogeny to date (pictured on the left, with representatives of each family)! We used more fossil calibrations, more genes, and more species than any previous study. Be on the lookout for the paper sometime this year! This research was conducted with Dr. John Wiens at the University of Arizona.

Because most Plethodontid salamanders guard their nests, it is easier to find groups of siblings with known parentage in the wild. This allows us to use offspring to infer recombination rates and create high-density linkage maps via RNA-seq. I have collected specimens for five different genera of Plethodontid salamanders, and am in the process of constructing linkage maps for two different species! This work is being conducted in collaboration with Dr. Jeramiah Smith at the University of Kentucky.