Where do species come from? It seems like a simple question, but has baffled scholars in Biology for many generations. Both from an evolutionary (‘How do species change and result in new species?’) and biogeographic (‘What can we learn about the evolutionary history of species from their current spatial distribution’) perspective. And why would we even bother one might ask? Well, if we can understand how species reach new regions, change and ultimately persist, we can start to understand what are the major factors that promote biodiversity in any specific region. I often feel that people tend to believe that biodiversity is an abstract concept that is only of importance for hippies and other nature lovers, but in fact, a stable biodiverse community has major impacts on climate, our natural resources (from water reservoirs to agriculture) and yes, our general well-being. Therefore, I am dedicated and motivated to study the natural world and for my PhD research I am focusing on a specific group of lizards that lend themselves extremely well for studying such questions!

On the other pages of this website, you can find a more detailed and ‘nerdy’ outline of some of the questions I am working on, but in this blog I will mainly provide short casual stories on fieldwork follies and hopefully can be tech savvy enough to also accompany them with some visual frills, to increase the drama. One last note, for readers of my soon to be ancient original travel blogs, you might remember that spelling errors and grammatical inconsistencies were a theme throughout all my stories. I don’t believe that has changed, and might even have increased while living Down Under… I kind of write as how I talk, sometimes a bit chaotic, but I prefer to write anyways than not to write at all… Although some people might prefer me not to talk at all, if that analogy really holds up… As you can see, this is going to be a very casual recollection of thoughts and short stories!