Biogeography, local adaptation and gene flow across landscapes

One of the central problems of biodiversity science is to understand how microevolutionary processes (genetic drift, gene flow, and selection) relate to macroevolutionary phenomena (the formation of species). Microevolutionary processes are complex because they act across space and through time, and are difficult to differentiate. Increasingly, spatially explicit approaches in landscape genetics and phylogeography are emerging as powerful tools to understand how populations evolve in space and across time. Our lab works to develop and apply tools like approximate Bayesian computation, spatial factor analysis, and linear mixed models to test specific hypotheses about the role of microevolutionary processes in population diversification.

 Current Projects: Landscape genomics of ticks and pathogens; Ecological diversification of alpine insects in the Northern Hemisphere.

Altai Mountains expedition team