My lab studies phylogeography, or how intraspecific genetic and genomic variation is distributed across species’ geographical ranges. These genetic patterns describe the histories of species within space, including how past climates and dispersal opportunities have shaped divergence among lineages or allowed genetic diversity to accumulate in different parts of a species range. We are particularly interested in whether these spatial histories, replicated across species, can shed insights into the assembly history of ecological communities and the drivers of differences in species richness among regions with different climatic histories.

Our lab- and field-based studies are currently focused on the insect communities of New Zealand, which—despite its small size—is an ideal region for testing the processes driving genetic variation due to its diverse topography and dynamic glacial history. We also leverage publicly available datasets to address these questions for diverse taxa at regional, continental, and global scales.

Graduate research projects in my lab encompass a variety of phylogeographic, biogeographic and macroecological techniques and a diverse array of study systems—join us!

• Marske KA, AT Thomaz, LL Knowles. 2020. Dispersal barriers and opportunities drive multiple levels of phylogeographic concordance in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Molecular Ecology.
• Ochoa-Ochoa LM, NR Mejía-Domínguez, JA Valasco, D Dimitrov & KA Marske. 2020. Dimensions of Amphibian alpha diversity in the New World. Journal of Biogeography.
• Rizvanovic M, JD Kennedy, D Nogués-Bravo & KA Marske. 2019. Persistence of genetic diversity and phylogeographic structure of three New Zealand forest beetles under climate change. Diversity & Distributions 25: 142-153.
• Miraldo A, S Li, MK Borregaard, A Flórez-Rodríguez, S Gopalakrishnan, M Rizvanovic, Z Wang, C Rahbek, KA Marske & D Nogués-Bravo. 2016.  An Anthropocene map of genetic diversity. Science 353: 1532-1535.
• Marske KA, C Rahbek and D Nogués-Bravo. 2013. Phylogeography: spanning the ecology-evolution continuum.  Ecography 36: 1169–1181.