Education
Ph.D. - University of New Orleans - 2013
Background
I started a postdoc working with Jeremy at LSU in the Fall 2015. Previously, I was a postdoc on the Open Tree of Life project at the Field Museum working with Rick Ree.
General Interests
I am an evolutionary biologist that is broadly interested in cataloging and quantifying biodiversity and understanding the forces that drive biodiversity. My more targeted areas of work include phylogenetics, computational biology / bioinformatics, evolutionary ecology and phylogeography. I am interested in empirical and applied study systems, as well as methods and models to make our understanding of those processes more accurate. While my main groups of interest are turtles and fish, I have worked on other groups including snails and more recently crayfish.
Work at LSU
My current work in collaboration with Jeremy will be to investigate the fit of models related to genome-scale data sets. We hope to provide some tools to assess how much of this variation is due to biological processes and how much is caused by methodological error, ultimately improving the accuracy and understanding of phylogenetic relationships.
Some of my other current projects and interests
- Quantifying the available phylogenetic information content in genetic databases.
- Anything related to the natural history, biodiversity or conservation of Cautrocienegas, Mexico.
- Working on examining the evolutionary history and patterns of gene expression in Cambarus cryptodytes.
Contact