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Jeff Skevington, Ph.D.
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Contact details
Telephone: 613-759-1647
Fax: 613-759-1927
E-mail: skevingtonj@agr.gc.ca
Overview
Jeff has conducted most of his revisionary work on Pipunculidae (big-headed flies), and has also published papers on Syrphidae (flower flies), Asilidae (robber flies) and Therevidae (stilletto flies). Part of his mandate with Agriculture Canada includes the identification of plant-pest flies.
Current Research Projects
1. Contribute to resolving the relationships of Cyclorrhaphan flies in order to prepare a more stable and predictive classification for this large and difficult lineage. This is part of a U.S. National Science Foundation Diptera Tree of Life Project grant to Brian Wiegmann. The predictive nature of the phylogeny resulting from this work will help all scientists that make use of flies in their research. This project involves a large international team of research scientists: Brian Wiegmann and Markus Friedrich, North Carolina State University, USA; Greg Courtney, Iowa State University, USA ; David Yeates and Christine Lambkin, CSIRO, Canberra, Australia; Thomas Pape, Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden; Rudolf Meier, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; Chris Thompson, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA; Steve Marshall, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada; David Grimaldi, American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA; Steve Gaimari, California Department of Food and Agriculture, Sacramento, California, USA; Jade Savage (McGill University, Quebec, Canada). Data from several genes and morphology will be combined to produce a general overall phylogeny including all families of Diptera and detailed phylogenies of parts of the dipteran tree.
2. Revisions of Pipunculidae. Revise the Nearctic Eudorylini fauna, the New Zealand pipunculid fauna and continue work on the Australasian Eudorylini (one tribe of Pipunculidae).
3. Publication of a catalogue of Pipunculidae of the World with Marc De Meyer. This catalogue (De Meyer, 1996; De Meyer and Skevington, 2000) has now been databased, updated and will soon be available electronically and in a new hard copy publication. The catalogue includes 1366 species with information about synonyms, distributions, and taxonomic literature. Publication of this catalogue will facilitate work by ecologists and systematists working on pipunculids and their hosts.
4. Production of a book and interactive keys on the Syrphidae of Ontario with Steve Marshall, Bill Crins and J.R. Vockeroth.
5. Test the potential of using molecular barcoding for identification of Pipunculidae. This project has extremely wide appeal and the results may be applied to any group of flies of agricultural significance. For more information on molecular barcoding, click here.
6. Revision of Fijian Pipunculidae (as part of National Science Foundation biodiversity study on Fijian arthropods to Neal Evenhuis and Mike Irwin). This NSF project aims to describe and better understand the biodiversity of several lineages of arthropods in Fiji. A better understanding of the biogeography of Fiji will follow from this basic research.
7. Phylogeny of Diopsoidea (Diptera), with emphasis on Syringogastridae (as part of collaborative study with Steve Marshall and David Grimaldi). A phylogeny of Syringogastridae is planned as part of a world revision of this family by Steve Marshall. This family level phylogeny will then be placed into the context of the superfamily Diopsoidea.
8. Phylogeny of Nesobasis (Odonata), with the goal of understanding the role of sex bias in these damselflies (as part of collaborative study with Tom Sherratt, Hans Van Gossum, Arash Rashed, Chris Beatty and Sylvain Charlat). Some species of Nesobasis are only known from females or have populations almost completely dominated by females. These populations appear to be parthenogenetic and we are interested in discovering whether this group of species evolved once or several times. We hope to be able to suggest a mechanism for this very unusal behaviour after mapping the traits onto a phylogeny.
Are you interested in insects? Curious about learning more about evolutionary relationships, biogeography, ecology, systematics, phylogenetic theory? Insects are one of the best groups of animals to use for studying macro and micro-evolutionary patterns. My lab focuses on research on the systematics of flies and has worked on other groups such as dragonflies and damselflies. We use a synthetic approach to study any groups that we are interested in. This involves collecting morphological, molecular and ecological data on the group and synthesizing it to produce robust species level concepts and phylogenetic hypotheses of relationships. Our research is global.
Candidates must be motivated, organized, enthusiastic, and interested in both lab based research (microscope work and molecular work) and field work and related travel. Work will be conducted in my labs at the K.W. Neatby Building (housing the Canadian National Collection of Insects, Arachnids and Nematodes - 960 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, ON, Canada). Students will complete course work at Carleton University (less than 10 minutes away) and will have access to lab space there as well.
Contact me if you are interested in this type of research. All projects will be considered - Undergraduate thesis or Summer NSERC, M.Sc., Ph.D. or Post Doc. I have NSERC funding to supplement student grants, scholarships and TA-ships. Of course, the more money that you bring, the more that you will have to create an exciting and dynamic research project.Adjunct professor, Carleton University and University of Ottawa. Also, special graduate faculty member, University of Guelph.
This page last updated on
31-Jan-2008
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