I’m a postdoc interested in the ecology and evolution of biotic interactions and their impact on biodiversity. My research at Naturalis focuses on the evolutionary signatures of seed dispersal loss in large 'megafaunal' fruits. Particularly, I study with palms with such megafruits in tropical island systems where they have lost most of their megafunal seed dispersers. Are temporally distinct megafauna declines across systems independently associated with eco-evolutionary trajectories in local megafruit palms? To answer this question, I use population genomics to bridge microevolutionary population dynamics with broader ecological context of megafauna extinction as well as paleoclimatic dynamics.
Keywords
Population genetics, genomics, Palms, Megafauna, Frugivory, Seed Dispersal, Mutualistic Networks, Functional Traits