Hi, I'm James

My Research uses population genetics and genomics to understand Agricultural pests (insects and weeds) towards the goal of increased food security through better crop protection.

My research covers seveal themes:

Cryptic Species

Modern genetics approaches have shown us that many pest insect species that look morphologically like one species are actually made up of several cryptic species. This is important because the research done on this kind of insect pest is difficult to interpret, if the pest is actually six species, let's say, then we need a way of tying the research that has been done to each of the six species. There are also serious biosecurity issues with cryptic species. If we think we already have a species here in Australia then we might relax our biosecurity protocols - but if we have one of five species that look the same then we need to make sure that we keep up our defences and keep the others out.

Genomics

We're currently in a golden age of genomics thanks to advances in technology and analysis that have come from human genetics, but now we are able to transfer these advances to other organisms like insects and weeds. In the last few years we have been able to generate very complete genomes at a reasonable cost, and we can start to use these to understand mechanisms of resistance, but also to dive much deeper into population genetics processes and really understand the evolution of our most serious pests.

Insect plant interactions

Most herbivorous insects are specialists and feed on only one or two plant species, but our most serious agricultural pests and most invasive species are generalists. Understanding these generalist species is therefore crucial to understanding our most serious agricultural pests.

Movement

Undertanding the movement of agricultural pests is crucial to undertsanding how traits such as agrichemical resistance, or plant viruses, will spread between populations. Movement of pests from outside of agriculture into agriculture, and mixing between natural populations and pest populations in agriculture can also work to deleay the evolution of resistance. I use molecular tools (population genetics) to understand how different populations of pests are connected to each other by movement.

My Skills:

• Population Genetics
• Genomics
• Bioinformatics
• Molecular Ecology
• Evolution