About this blog
This blog is, in essence, an electronic field journal documenting my PhD fieldwork in Ecuador. I hope to bring you on journey from the beautiful coastal forests of Western Ecuador’s Choco region, right across the Andes to the vast Amazon basin (more specifically, to Yasuni national park, which is famously the ‘most biodiverse place on Earth’!)
About my work
I’m a PhD student at both RBG Kew and Imperial College London studying speciation, phylogenetics, evolutionary ecology and conservation of the Brownea clade, which is in the pea and bean family (Fabaceae/Leguminosae). My PhD fieldwork hopes to disentangle the forces driving the evolution of new species in the Ecuadorian Amazon given its superlative biodiversity, and to perhaps provide information for conservation measures.