Research

Research Focus

My research examines how social complexity emerges across evolutionary and developmental scales. I am especially interested in how reproductive division of labor evolves, how caste differences arise during development, and how worker sterility becomes established or constrained across lineages. To address these questions, I combine comparative evolutionary analyses with developmental, molecular, and organismal approaches in ants and other eusocial insects.

Current Research Projects

  1. I.

    Evolution of Eusociality

    I investigate the evolutionary origins of eusociality in insects, using comparative approaches across ants and related taxa. This work aims to identify the ecological, genetic, and phenotypic drivers that facilitate the transition to eusociality.

    Solitary-to-eusocial transition diagram A solitary insect form appears on the left, followed by a subtle transition trace and a resolved cluster of eusocial-associated forms on the right.
  2. II.

    Caste Development
    & Maternal Effects

    I study how queens and workers arise from the same genome, focusing on maternal influences and hormonal signaling that shape embryonic trajectories and gene expression. This work links developmental plasticity with the evolution of division of labor.

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  3. III.

    Evolution of
    Worker Sterility

    I explore the evolution of worker sterility by comparing lineages that have lost reproductive function to close relatives that retain it. This work elucidates the genetic and regulatory mechanisms underlying the evolution of altruism.

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