Supervisor: Thomas Pape.

Description of project: The focus of my research is the Hippoboscoidea, a superfamily of ectoparasitic Diptera that includes the Glossinidae (Tse-tse flies), the Hippoboscidae (Flat-flies or Keds), the Streblidae and the Nycteribiidae (Batflies). While the group is well-known alphataxonomically, the phylogenetic relationships are largely unexplored. The goal of my project is to resolve these relationships using both morphological and molecular data with genera as the terminal taxa in order to (1) test the monophyly of the constituent families (2) study the evolution of host shifts within the superfamily and (3) place the group within the Calyptratae.

Publications.