My research involves the genomics, host associations, and speciation of the order Strepsiptera. These insects are a bizarre group—they infect several major insect groups, grow up inside the bodies of their hosts, and eventually protrude from their hosts' abdomens like something straight from Alien (less violent though, they don't kill their hosts outright). Very little is known about these insects due to how difficult they can be to collect.

Even so, entomologists have been collecting these parasites for years, many of them without realizing it. A number of strepsipterans have unwittingly been preserved within their hosts in museum collections! I am using the more than 24 million preserved invertebrates housed in the AMNH, along with specimens from other institutions, as previously-untapped resources of archival genetic material and ecological data to inform questions about strepsipteran evolution. My dissertation focuses on three components of this subject: genomic elements, phylogenetics, and morphology. Because of this, I am actively developing novel methods in these fields to optimize strepsipteran research.