O. (Ornela) Dehayem Nanwou, MSc
Research interests
PhD project: Untangling the influence of traits on
insular diversification - Theory
(October 2021 - present, jointly supervised with F. Lens and
L. Valente, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Netherlands)
I study the evolution of biodiversity on islands. Islands have
played a fundamental role in the development of ideas in ecology
and evolution, due to their youth, well-defined boundaries, and the
simplicity of their ecosystems compared to the continent. These
characteristics make them unique and allow them to host exceptional
biodiversity found nowhere else. One of the unresolved questions in
biodiversity research is why some lineages on islands have radiated
spectacularly, while other colonizing species have evolved without
multiplication of the number of species. One explanation for the
difference in species richness among clades is the variation in
diversification rate, which can arise because of environmental
factors or species characteristics such as the presence of a
particular trait. During my PhD, I will develop a model to
investigate the effect of traits on species diversification rate on
islands.