Staff profile

I graduated with a BSc in Biology from the University of Portsmouth in 2024, having spent my final year working on intercontinental population structure and phylogeographic patterns in the tropical tent-web spider Cyrtophora citricola. I arrived at Durham in October 2024 and began an MRes/MScR supervised by Prof. Guillaume Chomicki.

Current Project:

Currently the only non-human mutualism between an animal and a plant designated as obligate agriculture, the Philidris nagasau – Squamellaria system consists of a single species of ant, P. nagasau, and six host species within Squamellaria. This system is a valuable model for the study of agriculture and mutualisms, but the mechanism of colony foundation and host-plant transmission between colonies remains uncharacterised. In this project, I am utilising whole genome data collected from ant colonies and host plants from the two Fijian islands to which P. nagasau is endemic. These data will be employed to study the population structure and demographic histories of P. nagasau and its associates, seeking traces of hypothesised colony foundation mechanisms in how populations are structured spatially and have shifted across time.

Research Interests:

·      Molecular Ecology and Bioinformatics

·      Community and Landscape Ecology

·      Mutualisms and Species Interactions

·      Sociality