Paleobiologi

    Currently I am researching the taphonomy, phylogeny and evolutionary significance of the enigmatic stem-group brachiopod Mickwitzia as part of my PhD project on problematic stem-group Lophotrochozoa (i.e. annelids, brachiopods, molluscs and kin). Utilising the rich fossil record of exceptionally preserved material from the Cambrian, I am working towards a more complete picture of how these early skeletal organisms relate to other sclerite-bearing lophotrochozoan taxa. Developmental and molecular evidence may be also of utility in determining their relationships with the brachiopod crown group and within the Lophotrochozoa as a whole.

    My research interests are diverse across palaeontology and evolutionary biology. The central theme of my work to date has been in integrating the diversity of available evidence with novel analytical techniques and new applications of existing methodologies. The overall aim of this 'total evidence'  approach is to produce a more comprehensive understanding of the history of life from multiple perspectives. Incongruence between, for example, molecular evidence and morphology can only be reconciled by careful examination of the inherent biases present within each data partition e.g. long branch attraction.

    I am also interested in how phylogenetic theory and bioinformatics can help flesh out the tree of life. To this end, I have used morphological cladistic analyses of fossil and recent organisms alongside molecular phylogenetics and comparison of supermatrix and supertree approaches under both parsimony and likelihood models. I am also interested in how fossils affect phylogeny, in particular stem and crown group relationships. Also, how preservational bias can result in ambiguity with regard to interpretations of fossils, especially with regard to exceptional faunas and how this impacts their placement when analysed with cladistic methods. 

    Additional previous work I have been involved with has included: experimental taphonomy specifically the role of microbial activity in exceptional fossil preservation, taxonomic and systematic revision of extant Scutigeromorpha (house centipedes), developing confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) as a non-destructive tool for taxonomic purposes and recovering phylogenetically useful characters from museum type collections to a resolution comparable to traditional scanning electron microscopy.