The New World blackbirds (Icteridae) are among the best known songbirds, both through exemplar species, such as the Red-winged Blackbird ( Agelaius phoeniceus), and collectively, as a model clade in studies of morphological, ecological, and behavioral trait evolution. Knowledge …
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The aim of the present project was to reassess the systematics, phylogeny and biogeography of the Indo-Pacific taxa of the scorpion family Liochelidae Fet & Bechly, 2001 based on morphology and molecules. The morphological matrix comprised of 85 terminal taxa and 263 characters …
Snake-eyed skinks are relatively small lizards of the genera Panaspis and Afroablepharus. Along with closely-related scincid taxa, the allocation of these genera has been constantly rearranged based on morphology, ecology and biogeography. Members of these genera occur primarily…
The Southeast Asian lizard genus Acanthosaura is distributed throughout Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, China, Malaysia, and a number of their offshore islands. Here I investigate the phylogenetic relationships of all nine of the currently recognized species of Acanthosaura u…
The Nearctic bark beetle genus Scolytus was revised based in part on a molecular phylogeny. Monophyly of the native species was tested using mitochondrial (COI) and nuclear (28S, CAD, ArgK) genes and 43 morphological characters in parsimony and Bayesian phylogenetic analyses. Pa…
Tuberculosis is a deadly infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). Multiple immune factors control host responses to Mtb infection, including the formation of granulomas in the lung, which are aggregates of bacteria, infected and uninfected immune cells whos…
The study of systematics is a framework for the understanding of the natural world by generating units of biodiversity and relatedness between and among groups. My project focused on two studies: resolving the hierarchical placement and diversity of Palearctic naked-toed geckos …
This study concerns the evolutionary relationships of the taxa belonging to the C. album aggregate (C. album, C. probstii, C. giganteum and C. opulifolium, all 2n = 54; C. striatum, C. novopokrovskyanum, C. bushianum, C. berlandieri and C. quinoa, all 2n = 36; C. suecicum and C.…
Mosasaurs were giant marine squamates that inhabited all of the world’s oceans approximately 93 to 65 Million Years Ago. The subfamily Mosasaurinae is one of the most diverse groups, including the robust-toothed Globidensini and the ichthyosaur-like members of the Plotosaurini (…
The cotton fleahopper, Pseudatomoscelis seriatus (Reuter) is a widely distributed insect across the United States. Although, it feeds on several native wild hosts, its agricultural importance lies as an economic pest of cotton in several states in the southern United States. No …
In my dissertation I examined the best-studied leafflower clade, the genus Glochidion, with 300 described species distributed from Pakistan to Japan, south to Australia, and east to the Pitcairn Islands. Because of their high species diversity and presumably complex biogeographi…
The tropical, flowering shrubs in the genus Erythroxylum (230 species) are commonly known as coca. For 8,000 years, two Erythroxylum species have been exploited for their production of cocaine. Coca plants remain culturally significant and economically important. Yet, their orig…
Reduviidae (assassin bugs), the largest clade of predatory non-holometabolous insects (∼6,800 species), display a range of prey specializations and members of one subfamily, the Triatominae, feed on vertebrate blood and are the vectors of Trypanosoma cruzi. A combination of phyl…
This thesis examines the development of taxonomic zoology in India between the late eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, coincident with British colonisation of the region. In so doing it draws into question conventional dyads of colonising and colonised nations, with the vec…
The Lecanicephalidea (Platyhelminthes: Cestoda) are a morphologically diverse group of elasmobranch (Chondrichthyes: Elasmobranchii) tapeworms. Currently, 95 species in 16 genera are recognized as valid. However, nine genera have previously been considered to be genera inquirend…
Algae are a large and diverse group of photosynthetic organisms that range in size from microscopic unicellular to multicellular forms. They usually inhabit marine and freshwater habitats. However, some are terrestrial and are capable of living in soil or above the soil surface …
A taxonomic revision of Tatera (Rodentia: Gerbillinae) from tha study area of north-east Africa and Asia is undertaken. The results are discussed in terms of the zoogeography and evolutionary history of the genus Tatera. Five species of Tatera are recognized in north-east Africa…
Hydrilla verticillata (L. f) Royle (Hydrocharitaceae; commonly "hydrilla") is a submersed aquatic plant with a cosmopolitan distribution. It is a nonindigenous, highly invasive weed that causes serious ecological and economic harm in the United States, and consequently is of gre…
The taxonomic diversity of endosymbiont Symbiodinium species and the physiological contributions they confer to coral host species are challenging to assess. It seems likely the genetic diversity of obligate Symbiodinium species modulates the physiological performance of reef bu…