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Welcome!
I am an evolutionary biologist with a background in macroecology, systematics and biogeography and an interest in exploring the causes, processes, and patterns of species diversity across landscapes.
I am a Research Scientist and Spatial Ecologist with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program at the University of Colorado, Fort Collins. Prior to this I was an Assistant Curator for Botany, an Associate Research Scientist in the Jetz lab at Yale, working with the Map of Life to understand and quantify the diversity of vascular plants at a global scale, allowing prioritization of stewardship at local and national scales. 2019-2020 I was a Research Associate at the University of Memphis with Dr Jennifer Mandel and the Center for Biodiversity Research (CBio), and a Fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, investigating the role that geochemistry and climate play in the diversification and evolution of phenotype in North American sunflowers and daisies. Before this I spent two years (2014-2015) working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Presgraves lab at the University of Rochester (USA), expanding my speciation genetics knowledge and identifying factors responsible for hybrid sterility between Drosophila species.
I completed my PhD in 2013 on species limits in the Broadleaved Paperbarks (Melaleuca leucadendra group) at the University of Queensland (Australia) under the supervision of Dr Lyn Cook (UQ) and Dr Mike Crisp (ANU).
I am an evolutionary biologist with a background in macroecology, systematics and biogeography and an interest in exploring the causes, processes, and patterns of species diversity across landscapes.
I am a Research Scientist and Spatial Ecologist with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program at the University of Colorado, Fort Collins. Prior to this I was an Assistant Curator for Botany, an Associate Research Scientist in the Jetz lab at Yale, working with the Map of Life to understand and quantify the diversity of vascular plants at a global scale, allowing prioritization of stewardship at local and national scales. 2019-2020 I was a Research Associate at the University of Memphis with Dr Jennifer Mandel and the Center for Biodiversity Research (CBio), and a Fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, investigating the role that geochemistry and climate play in the diversification and evolution of phenotype in North American sunflowers and daisies. Before this I spent two years (2014-2015) working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Presgraves lab at the University of Rochester (USA), expanding my speciation genetics knowledge and identifying factors responsible for hybrid sterility between Drosophila species.
I completed my PhD in 2013 on species limits in the Broadleaved Paperbarks (Melaleuca leucadendra group) at the University of Queensland (Australia) under the supervision of Dr Lyn Cook (UQ) and Dr Mike Crisp (ANU).
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NEWS
- September 2023: With huge thanks to my colleagues for a bunch of heavy lifting, our paper "A globally integrated structure of taxonomy to support biodiversity science and conservation" has been published in TREE! It presents a framework designed to help address issues that are growing increasingly pertinent as we try to string together large digital datasets from wildly different sources. I am a dirty taxonomist and name-hunter at heart, so welcome conversations about these things anytime!
- August 2023: I am thrilled to have taken a position as a Research Scientist and Spatial Ecologist with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. This is truly a life affirming position with the ability to continue my research into biodiversity and the distribution of organisms, while contributing to conservation science and planning, all in a supportive and collegiate workplace and location that is tailor-made to my love of the outdoors! I look forward to sharing more as it happens and hosting anyone who would love to come explore beautiful Colorado!
- November 1 2021: Began my tenure as the Assistant Curator for the Environment at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. If anyone would like to learn more about this institution, it's administration, and HR issues, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.
- January 11 2021: Just out in Taxon! Proud to work with a great bunch of Compositae-folk on a paper honoring Vicki Funk, examining photosynthetic pathways in the Compositae.
- October 6 2020: If you'd like to see what I've been doing, the Botanical Research Institute of Texas has kindly posted a video of my virtual brown bag talk from today to YouTube. With many thanks to BRIT for hosting!
- September 30 2020: Thanks to Ohio State EEOB department for inviting me to talk virtually today on my macroecology work. Some great conversations with faculty and students, I hope to be able to make it out there some day soon!
- August 11 2020: I will be talking as part of the “Sistemática, Evolução e Biogeografia de Compostas” (Systematics, Evolution, and Biogeography in Compositae) symposium at the virtual I Simpósio Digital de Sistemática e Evolução de Plantas. An edited recording of the session is available on YouTube.
- August 1 2020: I am incredibly excited to announce that I have joined the Jetz lab at Yale University and the Map of Life project as an Associate Research Scientist! In this role I will be expanding my research into Compositae diversity to a global scale, and continuing to investigate the role of extreme environments in plant diversification patterns.
- July 29 2020: Come see my virtual talk at Botany 2020 on the importance (and deficiencies) of phylogenomics in macroevolutionary research in the Compositae!
This talk is now available on YouTube, check it out here!
- May 18 2020: Enjoy my "virtual spring ramble through the woods" on the Smithsonian NMNH's social pages today!
- February 26 2020: The Smithsonian Magazine interviewed me for a nice piece on the museum's new exhibit presenting the discoveries of Captain Cook and Joseph Banks on their voyage to Haiti and Australia, the importance of museum collections, and the threat that increased fire events have to the biodiversity of the continent. Museums matter!
- January 25 2020: Thanks to the Jetz Lab, Center for Biodiversity and Global Change, and the Map Of Life project at Yale for hosting me and an awesome group researchers for the Early Career Scientist Symposium this week. Some fascinating work being done from animal tracking and range estimation, to changes in wind dispersal patterns. So much interesting data becoming available!
- January 14 2020: Come see me talk to the Compositae symposium at the Plant and Animal Genome conference in San Diego!
- December 9-13 2019: I have been let loose on the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History Instagram feed and will be tweeting about plants, where they grow, and the work I do trying to understand the role that the environment plays in this! Head on over and check it out!
- November 4 2019: Visiting Memphis for a Compositae networking meeting, and a HybSeq workshop with Dr Jen Mandel and Dr Carolina Siniscalchi.
- August 5 2019: The Edwards Lab has returned to the US! I will be based at the Smithsonian in Washington DC, with support and collaboration from Dr Jen Mandel at the University of Memphis.
- August 1 2019: Coauthored paper Identifying genetic markers for a range of phylogenetic utility - From species to family level is now live at PLOSONE! Congratulations to Dr Bo Choi for publishing from her PhD, and Carsten Kulheim for his hard work.
- July 29 2019: Awesome to fly back to the US and straight to the 2019 Botany meeting in Tucson, AZ. Great reception for my talk on North America defying the global trend of decreased plant richness in more extreme conditions. Look for the details in a paper coming soon!
- January 2019: Nice end to 2018 with my paper in Australian Systematic Botany rounding out some Australian monsoon tropics work focusing on cryptic breaks in historic gene flow in paper bark tree species across the region!
"Species limits and cryptic biogeographic structure in a widespread complex of Australian monsoon tropics trees (broad-leaf paperbarks: Melaleuca, Myrtaceae)"
- November 2 2018: Many thanks to the Biology Department at Stockton University for inviting me to present my work on diversification in daisies. Had a great time talking plants, fossils, careers, and exploring the Pine Barrens.
- August 16 2018: I had the pleasure of presenting a talk and a poster on two aspects of my research of the role of geochemistry in plant diversity and distribution at the 2018 Goldschmidt meeting of the Geochemical Society in Boston. Generated some really interesting feedback and perspective from the geochemistry community and great to see people interested in the importance of different classes of environmental variables at varying scales.
- July 2018: Neat little paper I coauthored on "Assessment of the Distribution of Seed Plants Endemic to the Lesser Antilles in Terms of Habitat, Elevation, and Conservation Status" has just come out in the Caribbean Naturalist showing strong effect of island size and altitude with diversity and endemism.
- July 25 2018: I presented my work on how classes of environmental variables are associated with species richness at different spatial scales in North American Asteraceae on the final day of Botany 2018. One of the key findings, that different classes of variable are significant at different scales, was well received. Thanks to everyone for the absorbing conversation and exciting work!
- July 23 2018: Congratulations to my 2017 NHRE (Smithsonian) summer intern Libby O'Brien on presenting our poster "Environmental Drivers of Plant Diversity and Turnover on the Guyana Shield" at the Botany 2018 conference. The data are the result of much hard work and we are working towards publishing them soon!
- June 4 2018: As part of my work on North American daisies I took on a project that had been drifting around for a while: looking at the relationships and possible dispersal pathways of a group of pan-tropical plants (Melanthera alliance) with a focus on Hawaiian lineages (Lipochaeta). The paper has just been published in Taxon. We provide a firmer understanding of relationships within the group, and a basis upon which to further test hypotheses on the historical movement of lineages and the evolution of polyploidy.
- May 6 2018: My article outlining the work I am doing to exploring the role of the environment in driving diversity and distributions in the Compositae of North America is the cover feature for the US Herbarium news letter this quarter. Writing for a broader audience was a lot of fun and a great way to step back and put my work in perspective!
- February 12 2018: Co-author on a little opinion piece in Taxon: "The Problem With(out) Vouchers", stressing the need for vouchers (often forgotten when sampling for DNA-based studies), and how to deal with situations where there aren't any.
- February 1 2018: Thanks to the NMNH Q?rius team for inviting me to talk about "How Science Works" with the Youth Program. It is exciting to present my research to fresh eyes, and be able to explain how the scientific method really doesn't work the way it's supposed to!
- October 3 2017: I will be talking on the role of environment in species distributions and diversification to the Botanical Society of Washington October 3. Please contact me if you would like an invitation!
- July 2017: My lightening talk at the Smithsonian NMNH on my work unraveling the drivers of diversification in Nth American plants is up on Youtube!!
- May 1 2017: Coauthored paper on why it's not always a good idea to describe distinct lineages as new species - the case of asexual pest insects published in PLOSONE
- April 4 2017: My paper (in collaboration with Dr Mike Crisp, Dr Lyn Cook, and Dr Dianne Cook) identifying, testing, and standardising biogeographic barriers in Australia's Monsoon Tropics has been published in PLOSONE. We hope that it provides a basis for more rigorous biogeographical study and explicit hypotheses testing of these concepts.
- July 30 - August 4th: Botany 2016, Savannah, GA! Sadly I will not be presenting this year, but am looking to talk to anyone and everyone about the role of climate and geochemistry in speciation and diversification in large endemic radiations in SW US/Nth Mexico, please come hit me up with your favourite group(s)!
- July 2016: check out my profile as a Smithsonian Featured Fellow and the project I am working on in my blog section!
- If you are in DC, Wednesday July 13, 2016, I will be giving a lightening talk as park of the Smithsonian series between 3pm and 5pm at the Natural History Museum. I will be introducing my work on the role of soil and climate in speciation and diversification in plants.
- I am excited to announce that I will be taking a new postdoc position at the Smithsonian Institution's Natural History Museum in Washington DC, starting January 2016. The project aims to establish the role that soils play in the diversification of North American plant species, and is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution, NSF, CSIRO, and Powell Center.
- September 2015: I presented my work on “Biogeography of the Australian Monsoon Tropics and the role of environmental barriers in the evolution of the Broadleaf Paperbark (Melaleuca leucadendra) species complex“ at UC Berkeley's Jepson Herbarium, Friday September 4th. Thanks to everyone for their hospitality and stimulating conversation!
- February 2015: My good friend, colleague, and mentor Lyn Craven passed away last year. I was honored to write an obituary for the newsletter of the Society of Australian Systematic Biologists (Banksia: issue 11). Lyn will be deeply missed.
- June 2014: Our small paper New combinations and names in Melaleuca (Myrtaceae) finally rounding off the sinking of several Myrtaceae genera into Melaleuca has come out in Taxon (63:3, 663-670).
- September 2023: With huge thanks to my colleagues for a bunch of heavy lifting, our paper "A globally integrated structure of taxonomy to support biodiversity science and conservation" has been published in TREE! It presents a framework designed to help address issues that are growing increasingly pertinent as we try to string together large digital datasets from wildly different sources. I am a dirty taxonomist and name-hunter at heart, so welcome conversations about these things anytime!
- August 2023: I am thrilled to have taken a position as a Research Scientist and Spatial Ecologist with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. This is truly a life affirming position with the ability to continue my research into biodiversity and the distribution of organisms, while contributing to conservation science and planning, all in a supportive and collegiate workplace and location that is tailor-made to my love of the outdoors! I look forward to sharing more as it happens and hosting anyone who would love to come explore beautiful Colorado!
- November 1 2021: Began my tenure as the Assistant Curator for the Environment at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. If anyone would like to learn more about this institution, it's administration, and HR issues, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.
- January 11 2021: Just out in Taxon! Proud to work with a great bunch of Compositae-folk on a paper honoring Vicki Funk, examining photosynthetic pathways in the Compositae.
- October 6 2020: If you'd like to see what I've been doing, the Botanical Research Institute of Texas has kindly posted a video of my virtual brown bag talk from today to YouTube. With many thanks to BRIT for hosting!
- September 30 2020: Thanks to Ohio State EEOB department for inviting me to talk virtually today on my macroecology work. Some great conversations with faculty and students, I hope to be able to make it out there some day soon!
- August 11 2020: I will be talking as part of the “Sistemática, Evolução e Biogeografia de Compostas” (Systematics, Evolution, and Biogeography in Compositae) symposium at the virtual I Simpósio Digital de Sistemática e Evolução de Plantas. An edited recording of the session is available on YouTube.
- August 1 2020: I am incredibly excited to announce that I have joined the Jetz lab at Yale University and the Map of Life project as an Associate Research Scientist! In this role I will be expanding my research into Compositae diversity to a global scale, and continuing to investigate the role of extreme environments in plant diversification patterns.
- July 29 2020: Come see my virtual talk at Botany 2020 on the importance (and deficiencies) of phylogenomics in macroevolutionary research in the Compositae!
This talk is now available on YouTube, check it out here!
- May 18 2020: Enjoy my "virtual spring ramble through the woods" on the Smithsonian NMNH's social pages today!
- February 26 2020: The Smithsonian Magazine interviewed me for a nice piece on the museum's new exhibit presenting the discoveries of Captain Cook and Joseph Banks on their voyage to Haiti and Australia, the importance of museum collections, and the threat that increased fire events have to the biodiversity of the continent. Museums matter!
- January 25 2020: Thanks to the Jetz Lab, Center for Biodiversity and Global Change, and the Map Of Life project at Yale for hosting me and an awesome group researchers for the Early Career Scientist Symposium this week. Some fascinating work being done from animal tracking and range estimation, to changes in wind dispersal patterns. So much interesting data becoming available!
- January 14 2020: Come see me talk to the Compositae symposium at the Plant and Animal Genome conference in San Diego!
- December 9-13 2019: I have been let loose on the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History Instagram feed and will be tweeting about plants, where they grow, and the work I do trying to understand the role that the environment plays in this! Head on over and check it out!
- November 4 2019: Visiting Memphis for a Compositae networking meeting, and a HybSeq workshop with Dr Jen Mandel and Dr Carolina Siniscalchi.
- August 5 2019: The Edwards Lab has returned to the US! I will be based at the Smithsonian in Washington DC, with support and collaboration from Dr Jen Mandel at the University of Memphis.
- August 1 2019: Coauthored paper Identifying genetic markers for a range of phylogenetic utility - From species to family level is now live at PLOSONE! Congratulations to Dr Bo Choi for publishing from her PhD, and Carsten Kulheim for his hard work.
- July 29 2019: Awesome to fly back to the US and straight to the 2019 Botany meeting in Tucson, AZ. Great reception for my talk on North America defying the global trend of decreased plant richness in more extreme conditions. Look for the details in a paper coming soon!
- January 2019: Nice end to 2018 with my paper in Australian Systematic Botany rounding out some Australian monsoon tropics work focusing on cryptic breaks in historic gene flow in paper bark tree species across the region!
"Species limits and cryptic biogeographic structure in a widespread complex of Australian monsoon tropics trees (broad-leaf paperbarks: Melaleuca, Myrtaceae)"
- November 2 2018: Many thanks to the Biology Department at Stockton University for inviting me to present my work on diversification in daisies. Had a great time talking plants, fossils, careers, and exploring the Pine Barrens.
- August 16 2018: I had the pleasure of presenting a talk and a poster on two aspects of my research of the role of geochemistry in plant diversity and distribution at the 2018 Goldschmidt meeting of the Geochemical Society in Boston. Generated some really interesting feedback and perspective from the geochemistry community and great to see people interested in the importance of different classes of environmental variables at varying scales.
- July 2018: Neat little paper I coauthored on "Assessment of the Distribution of Seed Plants Endemic to the Lesser Antilles in Terms of Habitat, Elevation, and Conservation Status" has just come out in the Caribbean Naturalist showing strong effect of island size and altitude with diversity and endemism.
- July 25 2018: I presented my work on how classes of environmental variables are associated with species richness at different spatial scales in North American Asteraceae on the final day of Botany 2018. One of the key findings, that different classes of variable are significant at different scales, was well received. Thanks to everyone for the absorbing conversation and exciting work!
- July 23 2018: Congratulations to my 2017 NHRE (Smithsonian) summer intern Libby O'Brien on presenting our poster "Environmental Drivers of Plant Diversity and Turnover on the Guyana Shield" at the Botany 2018 conference. The data are the result of much hard work and we are working towards publishing them soon!
- June 4 2018: As part of my work on North American daisies I took on a project that had been drifting around for a while: looking at the relationships and possible dispersal pathways of a group of pan-tropical plants (Melanthera alliance) with a focus on Hawaiian lineages (Lipochaeta). The paper has just been published in Taxon. We provide a firmer understanding of relationships within the group, and a basis upon which to further test hypotheses on the historical movement of lineages and the evolution of polyploidy.
- May 6 2018: My article outlining the work I am doing to exploring the role of the environment in driving diversity and distributions in the Compositae of North America is the cover feature for the US Herbarium news letter this quarter. Writing for a broader audience was a lot of fun and a great way to step back and put my work in perspective!
- February 12 2018: Co-author on a little opinion piece in Taxon: "The Problem With(out) Vouchers", stressing the need for vouchers (often forgotten when sampling for DNA-based studies), and how to deal with situations where there aren't any.
- February 1 2018: Thanks to the NMNH Q?rius team for inviting me to talk about "How Science Works" with the Youth Program. It is exciting to present my research to fresh eyes, and be able to explain how the scientific method really doesn't work the way it's supposed to!
- October 3 2017: I will be talking on the role of environment in species distributions and diversification to the Botanical Society of Washington October 3. Please contact me if you would like an invitation!
- July 2017: My lightening talk at the Smithsonian NMNH on my work unraveling the drivers of diversification in Nth American plants is up on Youtube!!
- May 1 2017: Coauthored paper on why it's not always a good idea to describe distinct lineages as new species - the case of asexual pest insects published in PLOSONE
- April 4 2017: My paper (in collaboration with Dr Mike Crisp, Dr Lyn Cook, and Dr Dianne Cook) identifying, testing, and standardising biogeographic barriers in Australia's Monsoon Tropics has been published in PLOSONE. We hope that it provides a basis for more rigorous biogeographical study and explicit hypotheses testing of these concepts.
- July 30 - August 4th: Botany 2016, Savannah, GA! Sadly I will not be presenting this year, but am looking to talk to anyone and everyone about the role of climate and geochemistry in speciation and diversification in large endemic radiations in SW US/Nth Mexico, please come hit me up with your favourite group(s)!
- July 2016: check out my profile as a Smithsonian Featured Fellow and the project I am working on in my blog section!
- If you are in DC, Wednesday July 13, 2016, I will be giving a lightening talk as park of the Smithsonian series between 3pm and 5pm at the Natural History Museum. I will be introducing my work on the role of soil and climate in speciation and diversification in plants.
- I am excited to announce that I will be taking a new postdoc position at the Smithsonian Institution's Natural History Museum in Washington DC, starting January 2016. The project aims to establish the role that soils play in the diversification of North American plant species, and is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution, NSF, CSIRO, and Powell Center.
- September 2015: I presented my work on “Biogeography of the Australian Monsoon Tropics and the role of environmental barriers in the evolution of the Broadleaf Paperbark (Melaleuca leucadendra) species complex“ at UC Berkeley's Jepson Herbarium, Friday September 4th. Thanks to everyone for their hospitality and stimulating conversation!
- February 2015: My good friend, colleague, and mentor Lyn Craven passed away last year. I was honored to write an obituary for the newsletter of the Society of Australian Systematic Biologists (Banksia: issue 11). Lyn will be deeply missed.
- June 2014: Our small paper New combinations and names in Melaleuca (Myrtaceae) finally rounding off the sinking of several Myrtaceae genera into Melaleuca has come out in Taxon (63:3, 663-670).
@DrBortEdwards
