I am an evolutionary biologist. The unifying theme across my postdoc and PhD research was understanding species' evolutionary, ecological and behavioural responses to rapidly changing environments. I worked across multiple organizational levels of life - individuals, populations, and communities. I love insects and used them for my research. I have worked with beetles, flies and wasps. Insects are critical links in most ecological networks. Unfortunately, since the 90s, there are consistent indications of a wide collapse of insect populations. Feel welcome to contact me with any questions about my research work!

Do evolving species interactions in a community reshape other interactions?

During my postdoc, I worked with fly-parasitoid insect communities in laboratory microcosms. We found that rapid evolution to a single interaction can reshape other interspecific interactions through fitness trade-offs, highlighting how recent evolutionary history may influence community dynamics and invasion susceptibility. Preprint out soon!

How does evolving parasitoid resistance and changing species abundance impact eco-evolutionary dynamics?

This is an ongoing project. More updates later!

What shapes population performance adapting to a harsh new environment?

For my dissertation, I used experimental evolution to identify population-level correlates of adaptation at the population level. This was an enormous and very satisfying project - it lasted 6 years (70+ generations) and generated >26000 data points. Using ten phenotypically distinct populations of the red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum), evolving in three different resources, I asked what ancestral phenotypic distributions correlated with population performance during adaptation. Which fitness components mattered during adaptation?

In collaboration with some of my colleagues from the Adaptation Lab, I collected a large population dynamic dataset (for 70+ generations of experimental evolution) to address these questions. Development rate was strongly correlated with population performance for an astonishingly long time! Find the paper (and more answers) here.

How do individuals change their behaviour when their environment changes?

I was also curious about how rapidly insects could adjust to a new environment, so I looked at how beetles change their feeding and reproduction in response to spatially and/or temporally fluctuating environments. I found that context strongly changes behaviour, highlighting the nuances of behaviours, even in insects. There are even evolutionary bases for some of these shifts! Female oviposition behaviour aligns with a classic evolutionary tradeoff in the red flour beetle (Ravi Kumar et al, 2023).  Find a talk I gave about this here. Finally, changes in larval feeding may support resource use generalism in this species (Ravi Kumar et al 2018, graphical abstract). 

Stroke epidemiology, pathophysiology and clinical outcomes

During a gap year following the completion of my PhD, I consulted for Turtle Shell Technologies, a startup focused on making healthcare accessible to a larger patient population in India. I conducted secondary research and prepared a report evaluating the global and local disease burden of different neurological diseases. I identified stroke as a primary research focus because stroke intervention innovations promised to have a very high impact on alleviating disease burden, both globally and in India.

Doing research in an industry setting helped me understand how to approach a research problem flexibly, from a broader real-world perspective.