Principal Investigator
Fredrik Ronquist
fredrik.ronquist@nrm.se
Google Scholar
Since high school, I have been interested in insects and in
computational biology, an unusual combination that has worked
well for me in my research career. For my thesis, I studied the
phylogeny and evolution of gall wasps and their relatives, and I
still keep an active interest in this group, but also in insect
diversity more broadly. On the computational side, I have worked
for a long time with the development of Bayesian techniques for
the analysis of phylogenetic problems. I enjoy interdisciplinary
research and encourage my students and postdocs to explore new
approaches and combine methods and perspectives from different
disciplines.
Postdoctoral Researchers
Elzbieta Iwaszkiewicz
ela.iwaszkiewicz@nrm.se
Homepage
I am an evolutionary geneticist interested in uncovering and understanding the
diversity of life. Currently I am working within the Insect Biome Atlas to develop
and implement novel metabarcoding protocols to describe insect fauna of Sweden and
Madagascar. Comprehensive sampling of insects both in time and space allows us to
understand how insect communities are distributed and how they react to changing
environment. Outside of research I have passion for science outreach and bio-hacking.
Read more about my current and past projects at
ela.iwaszkiewicz.org.
Thimothée Virgoulay
tim.virgoulay@nrm.se
Tim's research focus is currently implementing and testing inference algorithms such
as MCMC in a probabilistic programming language setting, using the Miking framework
and TreePPL, a domain-specific probabilistic programming language for phylogenetics:
TreePPL
Emma Granqvist
emma.granqvist@nrm.se
Google Scholar
As a person I am driven by curiosity. I obtained my PhD at the John Innes Centre in
the UK, where I combined mathematical modeling and molecular biology to study the
cellular signalling system of symbiotic legumes. Since May 2021 I am a Researcher in
the Ronquist lab, working in the MISTRA-funded Finance to Revive Biodiversity program:
FinBio.
Here I combine my experience with research and environmental monitoring, focusing on
analyzing biodiversity data for financial metrics. I work with probabilistic programming
and contribute to several other projects including developing a domain-specific
probabilistic programming language for phylogenetics:
TreePPL
Claudia Weber
claudia.weber@nrm.se
Changseob Lim
clim.entomology@gmail.com
I am an entomologist interested in insect diversity and the evolutionary history
underlying it. My passion began with a small dung ball carried by dung beetle and
has expanded into a "larger ball" encompassing the biodiversity of our planet.
Currently, my research focuses on metabarcoding approaches to estimate insect
diversity on the Korean Peninsula, as well as the methods for the bioinformatic
analysis of old bulk insect samples.
Key Collaborators
Nicolas Lartillot
Homepage
Long-standing collaborator in the development of Bayesian methods for the analysis
of problems in phylogenetics and evolutionary biology. Author of PhyloBayes and
several other software packages for this problem domain. Directeur de recherche – CNRS.
Isabel Sanmartín Bastida
Homepage
Long-standing collaborator in the development of phylogeny-based methods in
historical biogeography. Research Scientist, Real Jardín Botánico, Madrid.
Tomas Roslin
Homepage
Insect ecologist, co-PI on the Insect Biome Atlas Project. Professor of entomology
at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
Ayco Tack
Homepage
Ecologist interested in insect-plant-microbe interactions, co-PI on the Insect Biome
Atlas Project. Associate Professor, Department of Ecology, Environment and Plants,
Stockholm University.
Anders Andersson
Homepage
Biologist focused on metagenomic analyses of microbial communities, co-PI on the
Insect Biome Atlas Project. Associate Professor, SciLifeLab and KTH Royal Institute
of Technology, Stockholm.
Piotr Łukasik
Homepage
Biologist focused on insect symbiosis research using the latest genetic methods,
co-PI on the Insect Biome Atlas Project. Group Leader, Institute of Environmental
Sciences, Jagiellonian University, Kraków.
David Broman
Homepage
Computer scientist focused on modeling language theory and compilers for
domain-specific languages, among other things. Collaborator in the development
of universal probabilistic programming for statistical phylogenetics.
Dave Karlsson
Dave Karlsson is the managing director of Station Linné
and a taxonomist focused on Opinnae wasps (Hymenoptera: Braconidae). He is a naturalist
with a passion for education and outreach. Dave was awarded the prestigous Ärets Ölänning
award in 2017 for his leadership and dedication to insect research on the island of Öland.
Key Collaborating Institutions
Station Linné
Homepage
Field station on the island of Öland in South Sweden, focused on insect diversity
research and outreach.
Station Linné is a field station situated
on the Baltic island of Öland, Sweden. It is, among other things, home to two large
insect inventory projects: The Swedish Malaise Trap Project,
and the newly established Swedish Insect Inventory Project. The station is a source for
natural history education on Öland, and seasonally offers a number of programs on topics
ranging from butterflies and bumblebees to local history.
Madagascar Biodiversity Center
Homepage
Field station in Madagascar, focused on the diversity and conservation of the unique
insect fauna of the island. madagascarbio.org.
Former Members
Laura van Dijk
laura.j.a.vandijk@gmail.com
I worked as a post doc on the Insect Biome Atlas project.
For my current project, I am interested in describing the composition of insect
communities through space and time, the effects of environment and climate on the
composition of insect communities, as well as the consequences for ecosystem
functioning. My scientific interests have always revolved around insects and species
interactions. During my master thesis, I studied brain plasticity of generalist and
specialist butterflies during host plant search. I obtained my PhD at Stockholm
University, where I studied the interactions between plants, microbes and insects in
a spatio-temporal context.
Robert Goodsell
robert.goodsell@nrm.se
I am an ecologist with broad interests in the processes that drive population
dynamics, community structure, and species richness across regions. I have a
particular interest in combining novel technologies and methodologies to collect
data over large spatial scales, and developing empirically backed models to
investigate the responses of populations and communities to their drivers. I
studied for my PhD at The University of Sheffield, where I undertook research on
developing methods to investigate the dynamics of plant populations with
large-spatial distributions. I worked on the insect biome atlas project where we're
aiming to understand the assembly rules that drive the structure and dynamics of
insect communities in Sweden and Madagascar.
Andreia Miraldo
andreia.miraldo@nrm.se
I was the Insect Biome Atlas project
research manager. I was responsible for the implementation of the project and it
involved doing a little bit of everything; general project overseeing, leading the
operational, logistics and administrative tasks, managing fieldwork and labwork,
keeping an eye on the budget, and, together with the PI´s of the project, conducting
and overseeing the research. I have a PhD in evolutionary biology from the University
of East Anglia, UK and several years´ experience as a postdoc at the University of
Helsinki and the Natural History Museum of Denmark. Apart from making sure that IBA
runs smoothly, I also try to keep up with my research on global patterns of genetic
diversity.
Erik Gobbo
erik.gobbo@nrm.se
My PhD in the Ronquist lab was finalised in 2022. I got my Masters in Molecular
Biology at the University of Padova, Italy. Because of my training, I usually try
to address biological questions with a molecular approach, and I rely a lot on
sequencing techniques and bioinformatics. The main focus of my research in the
Ronquist lab was the biology of Cynipids, a family of galling insects. I worked on
the evolutionary history of the family as a whole, as well as the genetic basis of
gall induction in the genus Andricus.
Viktor Senderov
viktor.senderov@nrm.se
I was a Marie Skłodovska-Curie post-doctoral researcher at the lab April 2020 to
September 2022. My research was supported by a grant from the European Union's
Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant
agreement PhyPPL No 898120. My research project
PhyPPL aims to
achieve the first large-scale application of probabilistic programming in phylogenetics.
Emily Hartop
emily.hartop@ntnu.no
Google Scholar
Emily Hartop is originally from Los Angeles, California. She is a specialist on the
genus Megaselia (Diptera: Phoridae). Her research in the Ronquist lab was
focused on the evolution and diversity of the Megaselia of Sweden as well as
methods for large-scale species discovery and delimitation for hyper-diverse groups.
Emily is now an associate professor at
the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Miroslav Valan
miroslav.valan@nrm.se
Google Scholar
Former Marie Curie fellow, BIG4 consortium, and
subsequently affiliated to NRM, SU and Savantic (Stockholm based SME). I obtained my
masters degree, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, from the University of Sarajevo, BIH
(masters) and PhD degree from University of Veterinary and Pharmaceuticals Sciences,
Brno, CZ.
My current interests are computer vision and machine learning, which I mainly utilize
for research and development of automated species identifications. Check out my research
awarded by Systematic Biology as the best graduate student paper or my winning solution
to Microsoft sponsored competition Hakuna Ma-data on recognizing species from camera-trap
images in the Serengeti National Park (1st/800+teams, also presented at CVPR - No1
conference in AI).
Allison Hsiang
allison.hsiang@geo.su.se
Personal Website | Google Scholar
My research uses statistical modeling, Bayesian inference, Big Data, and computer
vision to understand morphological evolution and macroevolutionary patterns and
processes. As a postdoc in the Ronquist lab, I worked on developing probabilistic
models of morphological evolution for phylogenetic inference, specifically focusing
on detecting correlation structure in large "phenomic" datasets using both discrete
state and continuous multivariate normal models. Currently, I am a researcher in the
Department of Geological Sciences at Stockholm University, where I am using
high-throughput imaging and machine learning to study the morphological evolution of
planktonic foraminifera across the K-Pg mass extinction with the goal of correlating
community-level morphological patterns with paleoenvironmental records.
Daniel Marquina
daniel.marquina@nrm.se
Personal Website | Google Scholar
I was a PhD student at the Ronquist lab from September 2015 to May 2020. My project
was framed within the European project BIG4 (Horizon 2020 framework - Marie Curie
innovative training network). During my PhD I worked on optimising metabarcoding of
insects from bulk samples and eDNA for it to be used as a powerful tool to accelerate
and facilitate taxonomic work.
Mariana Braga
mpiresbr@gmail.com
mariana.pires.braga@slu.se
Personal Webpage | Google Scholar
I did a PhD in Ecology at Stockholm University and was co-supervised by Fredrik. For
my thesis, I combined host use records, phylogenetic information, network theory, and
computer simulations to study the relationship between the evolution of
butterfly-host plant interactions and butterfly diversification. We have also developed
a model of host-repertoire evolution that is available in RevBayes and is applicable to
a variety of host-symbiont systems.
Ashish Tomar
(Visiting graduate student; Fall 2017, part of BIG4 consortium).
Research topic: visualization of phylogenomic and taxonomic information.