Summary
I am a molecular systematist working on the phylogeny and evolution of species diversity in insects. My specific interest is the order Coleoptera (beetles), the arguably largest radiation of animal species on Earth, which I use as a model for an evolutionary understanding of the great diversity of living organisms. I apply genomics and phylogenetic analysis, working at all hierarchical levels, from populations to basal relationships of insect orders. Novel high-throughput sequencing methods are constantly opening up new avenues for studying taxonomy and biodiversity, in particular in poorly known groups of arthropods, such as the tropical forest canopy or the soil. Metagenomic shotgun sequencing permits the study of entire complex communities in bulk for the analysis of species richness and phylogeny directly from an environmental sample (‘soup-to-tree’). Equally, we are using environmental DNA (eDNA) and qPCR or metabarcoding approaches to characterize complex communities from soil and water in freshwater habitats, or to study gut content of insects and mammals. I have a joint appointment with the Natural History Museum (NHM) London where I conduct most of my research.
biography
1995 - present Joint Position in Molecular Systematics, Imperial College London and Natural History Museum, London, UK (Full Professor 2006)
1991-1994 Research Scientist, Department of Entomology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA.
1989 -1991 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Higher Education:
1988 PhD (Bacterial Genetics), University of Osnabrück, Germany,
1984 Biology, University of Regensburg, Germany
Publications
Journals
Ge X, Peng L, Vogler AP, et al., 2023, Massive gene rearrangements of mitochondrial genomes and implications for the phylogeny of Trichoptera (Insecta), Systematic Entomology, Vol:48, ISSN:0307-6970, Pages:278-295
Overcast I, Achaz G, Aguilee R, et al., 2023, Towards a genetic theory of island biogeography: Inferring processes from multidimensional community-scale data, Global Ecology and Biogeography, Vol:32, ISSN:1466-822X, Pages:4-23
Paula DP, Timbo RV, Togawa RC, et al., 2023, Quantitative prey species detection in predator guts across multiple trophic levels by mapping unassembled shotgun reads, Molecular Ecology Resources, Vol:23, ISSN:1755-098X, Pages:64-80
Li Z, Linard B, Vogler AP, et al., 2022, Phylogenetic diversity only weakly mitigates climate-change-driven biodiversity loss in insect communities, Molecular Ecology, ISSN:0962-1083
Emerson BC, Borges PAV, Cardoso P, et al., 2022, Collective and harmonized high throughput barcoding of insular arthropod biodiversity: Toward a Genomic Observatories Network for islands, Molecular Ecology, ISSN:0962-1083