I am a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Farrell Lab, Harvard University. I am broadly interested in the biology and evolution of beetles (Order Coleoptera) with special emphasis on the cause of their unique mega-biodiversity, most famously remarked by J.B.S. Haldane as the Creator’s apparent “inordinate fondness for beetles" (Hutchinson, 1959).
My research focuses on understanding the evolutionary mechanism underlying the ecological success of longhorned beetles in the genus Anoplophora (Cerambycidae: Lamiinae) at the genomic level. Other research project includes studying the adaptive radiation of diurnal longhorned beetles in the tribe Solenopterini (Cerambycidae: Prioninae) among the Caribbean Islands.
As an undergraduate at Harvard, I studied the systematics and biogeography of stag beetles (Coleoptera: Lucanidae) with a particular focus on the southern hemisphere lineages whose disjunct distribution suggested for the possibility of their vicariance following the continental break-up of Gondwana.
* Hutchinson, G.E. (1959) Homage to Santo Rosalia or Why Are There So Many Kinds of Animals? The American Naturalist 93: 145–159.
