We want to move the phenomics era into a phylomics era: large-scale morphological data integrated with genomic frameworks to understand the evolution of form, function and diversity in insects.
Form, measured
Our research asks why insects look the way they do, and how morphological traits evolve in response to ecological pressures and evolutionary history. By combining detailed skeletomuscular anatomy, advanced imaging and phylogenetic frameworks, we explore the mechanisms that shape the extraordinary diversity of forms in parasitoid wasps.
Ontologies: a shared language for anatomy
We actively build anatomy ontologies and use them at the core of our evolutionary studies. Ontologies provide a semantic, interoperable and machine-readable framework for describing morphology, so that anatomical terms are standardized, logically structured and comparable across taxa and studies.
Resources such as the Hymenoptera Anatomy Ontology (HAO) make large-scale integration of morphological data possible and lay the groundwork for AI-assisted analyses.
Linking HAO with specimen databases and digital resources allows consistent annotation of collections and literature, opening the door to computational analyses in comparative morphology, evolutionary biology and biodiversity informatics.