About me

My photo
Liverpool, United Kingdom
I am interested in how we can use DNA sequences to understand biodiversity – how do we recognise species, and how are species related at taxonomic, ecological and geographic levels? My passion for biodiversity research has led me from the world’s largest natural history collection - Natural History Museum, London, where I completed my MSc, to the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario - global centre for the international Barcode of Life, as a PhD student, and to the hyper-diverse tropics of Southeast Asia. The tropics will be the first regions to experience historically unprecedented climates and this will happen within the next decade. Consequently my recent research has focussed on understanding the effects of urbanisation and climate change on tropical and subtropical biodiversity - encompassing both species richness and ecological integrity across a diversity of taxonomic groups.

Feb 13, 2010

Estimating butterfly genome size


Back at the end of 2008, I helped out a MSc Student, Paula, from Ryan Gregory's lab collect butterfly brains from the Niagara Butterfly Conservatory for genome sizing. Since then Ola reared her own butterflies at the Department in Guelph, using barcoding to identify some of the more difficult specimens -- those that didn't fully emerge, or emerged damaged.
Looking forward to seeing the results of this project soon.