Jesse Meik

Biography

I’m first and foremost a naturalist, and I prefer to be in the field or a natural history collection whenever possible. I usually design research projects to include some field component and to leverage the excellent resources of museum collections. I’m currently looking to build collaborations with motivated and engaged undergraduate students as well as advise Master’s students on various projects in the area of ecology, biogeography, and evolution.

Research Interest

My research interests primarily fall in the following areas of herpetology and evolutionary biology: (1) pattern, process, and inference in comparative biology; (2) systematics, population genetics, and species delimitation; (3) phenotypic evolution (in particular evolution of body size and sexual dimorphism); (4) community assembly and biogeography; (5) biology of squamate reptiles (particularly rattlesnakes); and (5) evolutionary dynamics of interactions between mitochondrial and nuclear genomes. In general, my research approach involves comparative data and analysis—usually of distribution patterns, morphology, and molecular data