Area of research
Molecular Biology · Global and Planetary Change
Research interest
Research topics from publications: Preparing for invasion: Assessing risk of infection by chytrid fungi in southeastern plethodontid salamanders; Contextualizing enigmatic extinctions using genomic DNA from fluid-preserved museum specimens of Desmognathus salamanders; Additional data to the herpetofauna of Afghanistan; Understanding “Alexandrian” extinctions using genomic DNA from fluid-preserved museum specimens of Desmognathus salamanders. Representative work: Understanding the responses of naïve communities to the invasion of multihost pathogens requires accurate estimates of susceptibility across taxa. In the Americas, the likely emergence of a second amphibian pathogenic fungus (Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, Bsal) calls for new ways of prioritizing disease mitigation among species due to the high diversity of naïve hosts with prior B. dendrobatidis (Bd) infections. Here, we applied the concept of pathogenic potential to quantify the virulence of chytrid fungi on naïve amphibians and evaluate species for conservation efforts in the event of an outbreak. The benefit of this measure is that it combines and summarizes the variation in disease This study provides observation on 21 species of amphibians and reptiles obtained during various field trips in Afghanistan from 2007 to 2018. The core of this study is distributional data collected mostly by the second author of this paper that were systematically evaluated. Our records show a notable expansion of the current distribution range for several species and highlight the need for more extensive further sampling within the entire country. The first record of Cyrtopodion agamuroides (Nikolsky, 1900) complex for Afghanistan is presented here, increasing the number of herpetofauna in the country to 117 species
Contextualizing enigmatic extinctions using genomic DNA from fluid-preserved museum specimens of Desmognathus salamanders
Understanding “Alexandrian” extinctions using genomic DNA from fluid-preserved museum specimens of Desmognathus salamanders
Preparing for invasion: Assessing risk of infection by chytrid fungi in southeastern plethodontid salamanders
Additional data to the herpetofauna of Afghanistan