Understanding the origin of biodiversity has been a major focus in evolutionary and ecological biology for well over a century, and several patterns and mechanisms have been proposed to explain this diversity. I am an evolutionary and ecological biologist, interested in the evolution of phenotypic diversity and sexual dimorphism.

Broadly, in my research I use hummingbirds as a model system to understand evolutionary patterns and the processes of phenotypic change. Hummingbirds offer a unique opportunity to study sexual dimorphism, as they exhibit sexual dimorphism of bill morphology, and elucidate the underlying mechanisms responsible for it. Bill morphology is a critical trait under strong selection pressures due to its role in foraging efficiency, and this morphology can affect niche differentiation among species and between sexes. Thus, I took a microevolutionary approach to examine sexual size and shape dimorphism in hummingbird beaks for my Ph.D. research. I then scaled out to a macroevolutionary picture of how rates of evolution and magnitude of sexual dimorphism affects species diversification and species richness. Using landmark-based geometric morphometrics to quantify these morphological differences, I have been examining rates of phenotypic evolution and morphological disparity both within and between 270 species of hummingbirds.