People

Santiago Claramunt, PhD

Doris Zemurray Stone Endowed Chair in Biodiversity

Department of Biological Sciences, University of New Orleans

Ph.D., Louisiana State University, USA
B.Sc., Universidad de la República, Uruguay

I love science and nature, theory and fieldwork. My favourite birds are the South American ovenbirds and woodcreepers (Furnariidae). I obtained my biological sciences degree at the Universidad de la República, in Uruguay, and my PhD in Biology at Louisiana State University, followed by a postdoctoral position at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. I also worked at the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural of Uruguay and the Royal Ontario Museum.

Graduate Students

Vivien Luu

MSc, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto 

Vivien is interested in phylogenetics, time-trees and analyses of diversification. She is working on a new phylogenetic tree of the Neotropical ovenbirds that will provide new insights into the role of climate on their diversification.

Former Members

Aidan Godin

MSc. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto 

I am interested in the ecology and evolution of birds, and I am exploring the the relationship between morphology and flight performance.

Michele Santa Catarina Brodt

Visiting PhD Student, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria

I am a PhD student from Brazil with a focus on macroecological approaches to the study of avian biodiversity. My current research examines the factors that influence the geographic range size of Neotropical passerines.  

Shahd Daoud

BSc. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

I am passionate about the intersection of wildlife conservation and the evolutionary and physiological processes that shape animal biology. My current research focuses on understanding how wing morphology influences bird collisions, with the goal of contributing to more effective conservation strategies.

Kezia Wei

BSc, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Kezia is in her fourth year of undergrad and is passionate about understanding ecology and evolution and learning about how it generated the diversity we see today. Her current project works to understand the morphological predictors of bird-building collisions and how anthropogenic activity may affect the direction of evolution in avians. Outside of research, she enjoys painting, hiking, and board games! 

Michelle Su

BSc, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Michelle has participated in several projects involving preparation and digitalization of bird specimens, and building large phylogenetic trees. She is now a PhD student in the Parins-Fukuchi lab at UofT working on using fossil sand dollars to understand how microevolutionary processes scale up to macroevolutionary phenomena.

Jaden Tran

BSc, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

I am interested in the biomechanics and evolution of vertebrate flight, from the morphology of extinct Mesozoic avian ancestors to the ecological changes affecting bird species today. My favourite birds are the falcons (Falconiformes) and hummingbirds (Trochilidae). My current research aims to apply bird flight theory to the ecological and evolutionary morphology of flight performance in Falconiformes and Accipitriformes.

Noah Cazabon

BSc, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Noah is interested in ethology, animal cognition, and urban ecology. He is currently researching thermoregulatory adaptations in Columba livia domestica (feral pigeons), with a focus on how adaptive behaviours are transmitted.

Justice King

BSc, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Justice’s research interests lie at the intersection of ecology, evolution, and conservation biology. He is passionate about understanding animal behaviour and considering population dynamics and dispersal in response to a changing climate. His current research is focused on the impacts of temperature on animal behaviour, phenology, and development.

Vedant Gattani

BSc, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

I am currently in my second year pursuing a major in Biodiversity & Conservation Biology and am passionate about exploring the intricacies of avian evolutionary biology. Beyond birding and wildlife photography, I enjoy banding birds and rearing moths and butterflies. I am intrigued by the breadth of research conducted in the lab and am eager to contribute in any way possible!

Martina Gjevori

BSc, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

I am a fourth-year student in EEB and Earth Sciences interested in the evolution of birds. For my thesis project, I will be reconstructing a phylogeny for the Charadriiformes using morphological and molecular data for extant and fossil specimens.

Talia Lowi-Merri

PhD. Student, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Talia is interested in the relationships between morphology, ecology, and function, especially in birds and their extinct relatives. She is an avid bird-watcher, science educator, and museum advocate. For her PhD, she is conducting a broad-scale comparative analysis of the morphology of the sternum of extant and fossil birds and studying the phylogenetic relationships of fossil passerines.

Irmak Erdem

BSc, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

I’m currently in my third year studying EEB and Art History. I’m interested in the morphology and flight of birds and for my project, I am currently researching the relationship between flight capacity and extinction of Andean birds.

Hou Wai Colin Chiu

BSc, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Colin is interested in the phylogenetics and biogeography of birds and arthropods. His thesis work seeked to infer a more accurate age of the miners (Furnariidae, Geositta), along with a biogeographic analysis to explore the mechanisms of diversification. The poster based on this project was awarded the Corey A. Goldman Prize for Best Research Poster in the Evolution, Phylogenetics & Systematics category (2023). Outside of the lab, Colin enjoys weightlifting and inspecting tiny bugs.

Hellen Fu

MSc Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Hellen is interested in birds, both in the field and in museum cabinets. She is testing new ways to estimate the area of wings for using in the development of new morphological proxies for bird flight performance. She is also interested in applying these new methods to problems in ecology and conservation.

Joseph W. Brown

Wendy & Leslie Rebanks Postdoctoral Fellow, Royal Ontario Museum

Joseph is interested in birds and the development of bioinformatic tools for the reconstruction of large-scale phylogenetic trees and the analysis of diversification. He is using his coding skills to assemble a massively large dataset of DNA sequences that will be the basis for creating a Big Bird Tree. Learn more about other projects and code in his GitHub repository.

Jonathan Chu

MSc, 2021,  Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Jonathan is broadly interested in the ecology and evolution of birds, with a focus on the relationship between wing shape and dispersal in birds. In the past I have investigated a possible relationship between wing morphology and migratory flight ability.

Viviana Astudillo-Clavijo

PhD, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Viviana is interested in macroevolutionary change and the underlying mechanisms involved in the production of tropical biodiversity. She is currently using museum collections to study the interplay between ecological adaptation and historical evolutionary change in cichlid fishes. Beyond research, she enjoys teaching, hiking and drawing/painting.

Milly Hong

BSc, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Milly is interested in avian evolutionary ecology, particularly with migratory birds. Her honours thesis compared migratory flight morphology between eastern and western North American warblers using ROM specimens. With this work, she won the Best Poster Award (Corey A. Goldman Prize) in the category Evolution of Biodiversity and Morphology at the EEB Undergraduate Research Fair 2020. She is now pursuing a MSc degree at York University with a Fowle Scholarship in Ecology.

Alexandra Margaritescu

BSc, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Alex did her Fourth Year Project at the Lab, using the ROM osteological collection to investigate the relationship between head size and shape song acoustic characteristics of passerine birds.

Caroline Biel

BSc, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Caroline joined the lab to develop a review paper on species concepts and species delimitation in birds for the course Research Studies in EEB. Check her website to learn more about her adventures and art.