Bruce Stagg Martin

I am fascinated by the uneven distribution of biodiversity across the tree of life, and seek to understand what factors drive disparites in biodiversity across space and taxa. For example, why do tropical ecosystems harbor more biodviersity than temperate ones? And why are there hundreds of thousands of flowering plant and beetle species yet only hundreds of species in related groups like conifers and twisted-wing parasites? Unfortunately, such patterns were ultimately generated by variation in past evolutionary processes which cannot be directly observed. Generally speaking, my research aims to develop new statistical tools that use reconstructed "evolutionary trees" or phylogenies along with trait/biogeographic data to infer variation in past evolutionary processes and identify factors associated with this variation. While my interests are quite broad, I currently specialize in developing trait evolution models that allow evolutionary rates to vary across phylogenies.

Research Interests:

• macroevolution, 
• trait evolution modeling
• phylogenetic comparative methods