Broadly, I am interested in understanding the organization and evolution of diversity. My specific interests lie in the areas of biogeography, species interactions, (natural) selection and systematics. I am interested in the genetic basis and adaptive evolution of characters and their states, to understand the relationship between morphological and molecular phylogenetic hypotheses.

My present work and interests are in the biogeographic origins and affinities, and systematics of the herpetofauna of the Andaman and the Nicobar Islands. Taxonomically I have focussed my work on the draconine agamids of these islands and studied their relationships with their relatives in South and Southeast Asia. A few questions I have addressed recently were on the agamid Coryphophylax - Is this lizard genus really monotypic or valid, what are the sister taxa of Coryphophylax, and what is the most plausible biogeographic hypothesis for this genus. Morphologically the Andaman lizards of this genus resemble some species of Aphaniotis, however a new species of Coryphophylax that I collected last year is almost indistinguishable from Aphaniotis fusca with the exception of the covered tympanum in the latter. This study of the draconine agamids included both morphological and molecular treatment. The generalized frequency coding method (GFC; Smith and Gutberlet, 2001) was implemented on the morphology dataset. GFC however failed to resolve the status of Coryphophylax. A modification to the frequency coding method resolved relationships among the draconinae. The morphological hypothesis is however in conflict with several relationships inferred by Macey et al. (2000).

 

Comment on the Rehabilitation effort in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India post the 26 Dec' 2004 Tsunamis.

I have a reasonably large database of characters for the draconine Agamids, and will be willing to collaborate if you have compatible data, or other ideas.

coming up : New species of Coryphophylax (submitted Herpetologica) and a few new species of Calotes (submitted BNHS1613 to Zootaxa)

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