Ph.D. Defense

In June 2025, I successfully defended my Ph.D. dissertation titled Morphology, Evolution and Host-Driven Convergence in Ichneumonidae (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonoidea). My research focused on understanding how skeletal and muscular systems evolve in parasitoid wasps and how host ecology drives repeated patterns of morphological convergence. During my Ph.D., I integrated comparative morphology, micro-CT scanning, phylogenetic analyses, and evolutionary modeling to investigate the ovipositor system, mouthparts, and metasomal structures in Ichneumonidae. This work provided new insights into the functional and evolutionary mechanisms underlying host shifts and the repeated emergence of parasitoid syndromes. This dissertation represents years of collaboration, fieldwork, anatomical study, databasing efforts, and community building within ichneumonid systematics. It lays the foundation for a modern, integrative framework to study phenotype evolution in one of the most diverse lineages of Hymenoptera.