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Jeff Skevington, Ph.D.

Contact details
Telephone: 613-759-1647
 Fax: 613-759-1927
E-mail: jeffrey.skevington@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), Conopidae (thick-headed flies), Asilidae (robber flies), Syringogastridae, and Therevidae (stilletto 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 started as 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. 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. Currently working on revisions of the Nearctic Eudorylini fauna and the Australasian fauna that I have yet to publish on.

3. Revisions of Syrphidae. Currently working on revisions of Nearctic Chrysotoxum (with Daniele Sommagio) and Cheilosia.

4. Production of a book and interactive keys on the Syrphidae of Northeastern North America with Steve Marshall, Bill Crins, Dick Vockeroth and Chris Thompson. 4. Phylogeny of Diopsoidea (Diptera). (in collaboration with Owen Lonsdale and Steve Marshall). This project will explore all of the potential Diopsoid subfamilies using an extensive morphological dataset and data from several genes.

5. Phylogeny of Pipunculidae (Diptera) (in collaboration with Christian Kehlmaier, Marc De Meyer and José Rafael). Over 150 species of Pipunculidae will be included in this multi-gene analysis.

6. Publication and maintainance of a catalogue of Pipunculidae of the World with Marc De Meyer. This catalogue (De Meyer, 1996; De Meyer and Skevington, 2000) has been databased and is continually updated.   The catalogue includes 1402 valid species with information about synonyms, distributions, and taxonomic literature. At some point we hope to make it available on line.

Graduate Opportunities

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.

Expertise

Affiliations

Adjunct professor, Carleton University and University of Ottawa. Also, special graduate faculty member, University of Guelph.

Publications

Presentations

Education