About Me

My main interests involve: understanding variation in genome structure and the genetic basis of key traits, adaptation, and speciation - which I have predominantly investigated using genomic methods.

I have investigated these questions in: Howea palm trees (and their associated soil microbial communities), sharks, Alpine whitefish, and most recently Danaus butterflies and Poecilia fish species.

I've been lucky enough to carry out this work at: the National Botanic Garden of Wales, Imperial College London, Kew Gardens, Eawag (the Swiss federal department for aquatic research), the University of Edinburgh, and am currently based at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Danaus Butterflies

In my previous project I was funded by an Early Postdoc Mobility fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) to study the evolution and maintanence of a wing-pattern supergene in the African Monarch butterfly Danaus chrysippus. This work spans a number of topics including the assembly and annotation of multiple Danaus chrysippus reference genome assemblies, and the analysis of these assemblies and annotations to understand the structure of different supergene alleles (each associated with different wing-patterns) and how they have evolved. Additionally I will use a large re-sequencing dataset of >150 individuals spanning diffrent morphs from across the range to determine how different Danaus supergene alleles have been maintained through time.

Alpine Whitefish

Prior to my postdoc I completed my PhD at Eawag & the University of Bern in Switzerland under the supervision of Philine Feulner and Ole Seehausen and my research interests are mainly related to the genomic patterns underpinning adaptation and speciation. My PhD project was focussed on understanding genomic divergence between members of the diverse Alpine whitefish radiation (Coregonus lavaretus species complex). During my PhD I produced new genomic resources for the Alpine whitefish radiation (a linkage map and de novo refrence genome) and analysed a large re-sequencing dataset comprising 99 samples from across the radiation allowing us to investigate how Alpine whitefish species are related to one another, the extent of gene flow across the radiation, and determine the genetic basis and possible parallelism in key ecological traits.

Howea Palms

Before my PhD I undertook an MRes in Tropical Forest Ecology at Imperial College London. My dissertation project was based in the Savolainen lab where I studied the soil and root microbiome associated with the Howea palms of Lord Howe Island. This study aimed to determine whether soil and root microbial communities differed between the two palm speces and found that substantial differences between the speices, despite shared soil types in some parts of the island may have facilitated speciation in the face of gene flow.