our growing team
Barb Sharanowski joined us this month as a postdoc on the recently funded ensign wasp (Evaniidae) revision project. Dr. Sharanowski earned her PhD in Entomology from the University of Kentucky, where she researched the systematics of Braconidae (Hymenoptera) in Mike Sharkey's lab. She brings a fresh molecular perspective to Hymenoptera systematics - something desperately needed in our domain, where the same handful (literally) of rapidly evolving or otherwise problematic markers are often used to estimate higher-level (e.g., between families or genera) relationships. Barb's been using EST data to examine relationships between the major apocritan lineages and to develop new markers that will help us understand the relationships between lower-level lineages (e.g., between species and genera).
We're hoping our combined efforts to add more sequence data - i.e., the right kind of sequence data, mainly from single copy, nuclear protein-encoding genes - plus morphology and fossil evidence, will allow us visualize the evolutionary history of ensign wasps. Our current understanding, which is based on mitochondrial DNA (COI, 16S rRNA) and nuclear rRNA (28S) looks something like this:
Resolving that comb (red arrow) will help us answer several taxonomic, biogeographic, morphological, and natural history questions. We'll discuss the project and present early results at ESA this year. In the meantime, welcome to NCSU, Barb!
