As a biologist I am fascinated by the diversity of organisms that live on planet earth.
My research revolves around deciphering the diversity and evolutionary history of Diptera. Specifically, I have so far focused on a clade of asiloid flies (Apioceridae - apiocerid flies, Asilidae - assassin flies, and Mydidae - mydas flies) currently known from some 8,100 species that occur world-wide. I strive to combine morphological and molecular data in my phylogenetic analyses and increasingly utilize genomic data. In my taxonomic revisionary and collections-based work, I am developing and employing new cybertaxonomic tools to share data freely to the largest extent and to make my species hypotheses testable by future taxonomists through re-use and re-purposing of data that I generate. I am a firm supporter of open access to science and share my published data, digital illustrations and images, identification keys, and presentations etc. through online data repositories.
I am hosting the asiloidflies.si.edu web-site highlighting my research results and data published.
Deciphering the Diversity and Evolutionary History of Asiloidea Flies
My research interests are to postulate phylogenetic hypotheses by employing morphological characters and newly developed genomic loci from next-generation sequencing methods. I strive to use these hypotheses of evolutionary relationships to test evolutionary scenarios and biogeography and provide a predictive framework to examine the evolution of morphological traits, behavior, or ecology. I furthermore aim to advance the taxonomy by describing new species and reviewing previously described species and share and disseminate data with new, cybertaxonomic tools to make biodiversity data accessible to everyone in an Open Access model.
Phylogeny: Based on my dissertation, I have published two phylogenetic hypotheses of the diverse Asilidae – one based on morphological data of 158 species (plus 17 outgroup species) and another one combining morphological and molecular data for 77 species (plus 11 outgroup species) for which ethanol-preserved specimens were available. More recently, together with co-authors I have published the first Asilidae genome and we combined data from transcriptomes and fossils to propose the first time-calibrated phylogeny of assassin flies.
Taxonomy: To date, I have discovered and scientifically described 70 fly species (53 Asilidae, 2 Ephydridae, and 15 Mydidae) including three fossil Asilidae and re-described an additional 84 previously known species in my taxonomic revisions. I strive to promote taxonomy as a cornerstone of biodiversity science by employing novel cybertaxonomic tools for automating data gathering and machine-readable dissemination. Cybertaxonomic tools enable us to utilize web-based data repositories to store and retrieve information on taxon names, publications, digitized literature, morphological descriptions, molecular sequences, occurrence data, or images. The availability of these kinds of data in an open-access, online framework allows scientists to test and support taxonomic and phylogenetic hypotheses readily as well as link data in support of biodiversity research across taxon boundaries. I utilize both proactive tools to disseminate information of new species as well as retroactive tools based on digitized literature to achieve the widest possible dissemination into structured data repositories and to encourage re-use and re-purposing of the data by future dipterists, biologists, and the public at large.
Field work and growing collections: My field work has taken me around the world and the only place where I haven't looked for flies is Antarctica. The focus of my field work has been in southern Africa (so far in Namibia and South Africa), which has an especially diverse fauna for both Asilidae and Mydidae.
Current projects: I am aiming to address the phylogeny of Orthorrhapha especially Asiloidea and Nemestrinoidea with morphological and molecular data. My goal is to change the landscape of how morphological phylogenetic studies within Diptera are undertaken and I am employing novel techniques to gather morphological evidence. Furthermore, I aim to add high-quality, reference genomes to the research field and use them to develop new loci for phylogenetic analyses. I am continuing my taxonomic revisionary work and have recently been revising several Asilidae genera based on specimens collected during my field work in Namibia and South Africa. Natural history collections—archives of biodiversity—harbor so many already collected specimens of undescribed species and I have discovered several such taxa, e.g., an unusual Mitrodetus (Mydidae) from western Argentina, the first Apioceridae from Argentina, an unusual Australian Mydidae from the center of the continent near Alice Springs (Northern Territory), the third species in the enigmatic Australian Mydidae genus Anomalomydas also from the Northern Territory, two morphologically unusual Mydidae species from Namibia, that I am in the process of working up.
