1. What do you study related to biodiversity (what are your research questions, what organisms do you work on)?
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 I'm interested in the evolution and diversification of flowering plants. More specifically, I want to know how species are related to each other historically (their phylogeny), and also geographically—where do species occur and with whom? Studying species through time and space is essential for understanding their evolution.
For example, in Pedicularis (louseworts), different species have independently evolved similar floral traits, such as a long corolla tube. We know this because the phylogeny shows that these long-tubed species are each most closely related to short-tubed species.
Another example of questions I'm interested in relates to the fact that we see the greatest diversity of Pedicularis in terms of both number of species, and morphological variation, in a relatively small region of the eastern Himalayas. This region also contains the most species of bumblebees, the primary pollinators of Pedicularis. What are connections between these observations?
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2. How do you study biodiversity (for example, what technological tools and methodologies do you use in your research)?
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Field collecting and preparation of herbarium specimens is the most basic component of my biodiversity studies. Computers figure prominently in databasing and disseminating the collections information, including GIS data, photographs, etc. Studying the phylogenetic relationships of Pedicularis and other plant taxa involves extracting and sequencing DNA from tissue samples and subjecting the collated data to intensive computational analysis. I'm also interested in theoretical aspects of evolutionary biology, such as algorithms for inferring trends in the evolution of traits, and constructing phylogenies from incompletely overlapping data sets. This work involves a fair amount of computer programming.
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3. Where do you study biodiversity?
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My current focus is the Himalayan region, especially the Hengduan Mountains of south-central China, which is widely regarded as one of the world's great "hotspots" of biodiversity.
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4. How might your research have implications for biological conservation?
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Documenting the existence and distribution of species with specimens is perhaps the most basic kind of conservation research—after all, you can't conserve something if you don't know it's there. Sound conservation planning requires as much information as possible on the biology and geography of species in the area.
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5. How did you become interested in science? What made you want to be a scientist, and how did you get to The Field Museum?
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 My interest in biology started at an early age, but a pivotal moment came while volunteering with a development agency in Guyana, when I assisted a group from the Royal Ontario Museum collect fish and invertebrate specimens. That experience led to subsequent field trips to Costa Rica, where I found a mentor who inspired me to go to graduate school and study plant systematics. There, I had the opportunity to do lots of fieldwork in the Himalayan region; develop computer skills; and above all, work in one of the world's great herbaria. It was thus a very natural affinity that drew me to the Field Museum.
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6. Describe important collaborations for your scientific endeavors (describe your work with other researchers, organizations, or scientific groups, local or indigenous peoples, etc.)
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In my studies of the biodiversity of the eastern Himalayan region, my main collaborator is David Boufford at the Harvard University Herbaria and Arnold Arboretum. Jointly we collaborate with the Kunming Institute of Botany, China and a number of other institutions.
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