PhD project: Untangling the influence of traits on insular diversification - Theory
(October 2021 - present, jointly supervised with F. Lens and L. Valente, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Netherlands)

I study the evolution of biodiversity on islands. Islands have played a fundamental role in the development of ideas in ecology and evolution, due to their youth, well-defined boundaries, and the simplicity of their ecosystems compared to the continent. These characteristics make them unique and allow them to host exceptional biodiversity found nowhere else. One of the unresolved questions in biodiversity research is why some lineages on islands have radiated spectacularly, while other colonizing species have evolved without multiplication of the number of species. One explanation for the difference in species richness among clades is the variation in diversification rate, which can arise because of environmental factors or species characteristics such as the presence of a particular trait. During my PhD, I will develop a model to investigate the effect of traits on species diversification rate on islands.