Two PhD completions in the MEEP Lab

Two members of the MEEP Lab, Cara Van Der Wal and Kyle Ewart, completed their doctoral studies in the first half of 2020. Congratulations to both Cara and Kyle!

Cara Van Der Wal was awarded a PhD for her work on the evolution and phylogeny of crustaceans, specifically mantis shrimp and crayfish. Some of her doctoral work has been published in Invertebrate Systematics and in the Encyclopedia of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (Elsevier, Amsterdam). Prior to her PhD, Cara completed her Honours project in the MEEP Lab. The project involved using phylogenetic and molecular clock analyses to investigate the phylogeny and evolution of mantis shrimps, focussing on the superfamily Squillidae. Cara’s research was supervised by Nate Lo, Simon Ho, and Shane Ahyong (Australian Museum).

Kyle Ewart was awarded a PhD for his thesis on wildlife genetics. His work has been published in Heredity, Journal of Biogeography, and Molecular Ecology Resources. For his PhD research, he used a genetic approach to study the evolution and phylogeography of two commonly traded Australian cockatoo species (red-tailed black-cockatoo and pink cockatoo) and an introduced invasive bird (common myna). Kyle was supervised by Nate Lo, Simon Ho, Rebecca Johnson (Australian Museum), and Rob Ogden (University of Edinburgh).