Sydney K. Decker
PhD Candidate, Ohio State University
Ongoing Projects
Species Boundary Morphometrics
As with genetic data, technological advances have changed how we analyze morphology in our study systems. I am interested in comparing different methods of morphology analysis at the species boundary level using Yellow bat skulls.
Systematics of Yellow Bats
I have been using molecular methods to research Yellow bats since my first year as an undergraduate student, starting by sequencing cytochrome b for the two lineages of Lasiurus intermedius. I am now using Next Gen Sequencing methods to assess evolutionary patterns and speciation in the Yellow bat group.
Predicting Phylogeographic Breaks
Identifying features of the landscape or species traits that influence population genetic structure is a primary goal in phylogeography. I use large-scale data in collaboration with the phylogatR project to estimate phylogeographic breaks in various taxa and build machine learning models to discover traits important to predicting phylogeographic breaks.
