Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Seminar: Dr Seraina Klopfstein

Visiting researcher Seraina Klopfstein will present on 'Pleasures and perils of dating trees with fossils: an example from pimpliform parasitoid wasps (hymenoptera, ichneumonidae)'.

Dr Klopfstein is Curator of Entomology at the Natural History Museum in Basel (Switzerland). She has previously held postdoctoral fellowships in Stockholm, Adelaide and Bern, and is very enthusiastic about the Austral insect fauna.

Fascinated by the diversity of nature from an early age, Seraina is now a specialist on parasitoid wasps of the family Ichneumonidae – one of the groups for which our knowledge lags most strongly behind their actual diversity. While basic taxonomic research keeps inspiring her to investigate functional morphology, ecology and courtship behaviour, she also contributes to systematics and phylogenetics.

Design of phylogenetic studies and the calibration of molecular clocks has recently also sparked her interest in ichneumonid fossils and the modelling of morphological characters within total-evidence dating.

Currently, Seraina is describing more of the unknown past and present ichneumonid fauna, and dating the phylogeny for these parasitoids to obtain a timeline for their co-evolution with their hosts.

This is a joint seminar provided by the Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology & Biodiversity and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the School of Biological Sciences.