Insect Science: Graduate Interdisciplinary Program

Joseph Deas

Research Interests:

My broad interests are in insect diversity, parasite diversity, phylogeography, and speciation. Specifically I would like to focus on the coevolutionary interactions between (1) parasites and their insect hosts and (2) phytophagous insects and their host plants. Generally, there are three coevolutionary scenarios that I want to explore that possibly occur in concert: host fidelity, host-switching and cospeciation. Initially I would like to test these scenarios by measuring the degree of concordance between the higher-level molecular phylogenies of the insect parasites/phytophagous insects and their hosts/host plants, but I also want to test host fidelity using an ecological approach. A great system to start with would be coreid bug genera and their host cacti or chrysomelid beetle genera and their host plants. Additionally, I would like to investigate for possible phylogeographic patterns in these systems. But, in the future it would be ideal to know how host fidelity, host-switching and cospeciation collectively contribute (or not) to the diversity of insect parasites and phytophagous insects.

Joseph Deas

Research Interests:

The Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Insect Science