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Jeff Skevington, Ph.D.

Contact details
Scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
 Telephone: 613-720-2862
 Fax: 613-759-1927
E-mail: jhskevington@gmail.com

Current Research Projects
1. Phylogeny of World Syrphidae (Diptera) (in collaboration with Ximo Mengual and many others). Over 500 species of syrphids have already been included in this multi-gene analysis and the goal is to get to over 1000.

2. Revisions of Pipunculidae. Currently working on revisions of the Nearctic Eudorylini fauna and the Australasian fauna that I have yet to publish on.

3. Revisions of Syrphidae. Currently working on many revisions, including Nearctic Chrysotoxum and several Australian taxa.

4. Phylogeny of Pipunculidae (Diptera) (in collaboration with Behnam Motamedinia and Christian Kehlmaier). Over 150 species of Pipunculidae will be included in this multi-gene analysis.

5. Publication and maintainance of a catalogue of Pipunculidae of the World with Marc De Meyer. This catalogue (De Meyer, 1996; De Meyer and Skevington, 2000) has been databased and is continually updated.   The catalogue includes 1422 valid species with information about synonyms, distributions, and taxonomic literature. At some point we hope to make it available on line.

Graduate Opportunities

Are you interested in insects? Curious about learning more about evolutionary relationships, biogeography, ecology, systematics, phylogenetic theory? Insects are one of the best groups of animals to use for studying macro and micro-evolutionary patterns. My lab focuses on research on the systematics of flies and has worked on other groups such as dragonflies and damselflies. We use a synthetic approach to study any groups that we are interested in. This involves collecting morphological, molecular and ecological data on the group and synthesizing it to produce robust species level concepts and phylogenetic hypotheses of relationships. Our research is global.

Candidates must be motivated, organized, enthusiastic, and interested in both lab based research (microscope work and molecular work) and field work and related travel. Work will be conducted in my labs at the K.W. Neatby Building (housing the Canadian National Collection of Insects, Arachnids and Nematodes - 960 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, ON, Canada). Students will complete course work at Carleton University (less than 10 minutes away) and will have access to lab space there as well.

Contact me if you are interested in this type of research. All projects will be considered - Undergraduate thesis or Summer NSERC, M.Sc., Ph.D. or Post Doc. I have NSERC funding to supplement student grants, scholarships and TA-ships. Of course, the more money that you bring with your own scholarships, the more that you will be able to create an exciting and dynamic research project.

Expertise

Affiliations

Adjunct professor, Carleton University and University of Ottawa. Also, special graduate faculty member, University of Guelph.

Publications

Presentations

Education