Hello there!!

Glad to see you here. I am a researcher in the school of evolutionary thinking. My research interest spans molecular evolution, population genomics, and host-Wolbachia interaction. I employ laboratory experiments and high-throughput genomic information to gain insights into trait evolution in insect taxa and decipher the intriguing ecology of Wolbachia-mediated reproductive parasitism in insect hosts. Using comparative genomics, I investigate the ways populations respond to their environment, and how distinct ecological events such as bottleneck, migration, and drift influence population resilience.

Currently, I work as a Faculty Fellow at CSIR-CCMB, where I lead a DST-INSPIRE funded project to unravel the effect of historical bottleneck on contemporary population structure in the biocontrol species Zygogramma bicolorata. The project is relevant to decipher potential strategies to improve the ecological resilience of bottleneck population in general and that of the biocontrol agent, in particular.

Previously, I have spent a year and half at IISER-BPR exploring different research questions in the same biocontrol species; for instance, its reproductive biology, chemical ecology, and community-level interaction. Prior to this, during my PhD dissertation at IISER-TVM, I worked with different lepidopteran taxa to understand their evolutionary histories in relation to past ecological events under the frameworks of molecular phylogenetics and phylogeography.