Education
PhD, Australian National University. July 2016 to February 2020 – Supervised by Marcel Cardillo
Bachelor of Science (Honours), Australian National University, Canberra, 2015.
Professional Appointments
Current: Postdoctoral Researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH Zürich) and Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape (WSL)
Publications
Pavón‐Vázquez, C. J., Brennan, I. G., Skeels, A. & Keogh. J S. 2021. Competition and geography underlie speciation and morphological evolution in Indo‐Australasian monitor lizards. Evolution. doi.org/10.1111/evo.14403
Hagen, O*, Skeels, A*, Onstein, R., Jetz, W., Pellissier, L. 2021. Earth history events shaped the evolution of uneven biodiversity across tropical moist forests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2026347118 *Authors contributed equally
Skeels, A., Dinnage, R. Medina, I. Cardillo, M. 2021. Ecological interactions shape the evolution of flower colour in communities across a temperate biodiversity hotspot. Evolution Letters. doi.org/10.1002/evl3.225
Bromham, L., Skeels, A., Schneemann, H., Dinnage, R., Hua, X. 2021. There is little evidence that spicy food in hot countries is an adaptation to reducing infection risk. Nature Human Behaviour, 1-14.
Dinnage, R., Skeels, A. & Cardillo, M. 2020. Spatiophylogenetic modelling of extinction risk reveals evolutionary distinctiveness and brief flowering period as risk factors in a diverse hotspot plant genus. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 287 (1926), 20192817.
Skeels, A. Esquerré, D., & Cardillo, M. 2020. Alternative pathways to diversity across ecologically distinct lizard radiations. Global Ecology and Biogeography. doi.org/10.1111/geb.13044
O. El‐Deeb*, Skeels, A.*, & Brennan, I. 2020. Digest: The evolutionary relationship between environment and size in Australian rodents. Evolution. doi.org/10.1111/evo.13909. *equal contribution
Skeels, A. 2019. Lineages through space and time plots: visualising spatial and temporal changes in diversity. Frontiers of Biogeography. doi:10.21425/F5FBG42954
Skeels, A. & Cardillo, M. 2019. Equilibrium and non‐equilibrium phases in the radiation of Hakea and the drivers of diversity in Mediterranean‐type ecosystems. Evolution. 73 (7) 1392-1410.
Skeels, A. & Cardillo, M. 2019. Reconstructing the geography of speciation from contemporary biodiversity data. American Naturalist. 193 (2), 240-255.
Skeels, A. & Cardillo, M. 2017. Niche evolution and spatial diversity patterns in Mediterranean-hotspot plant genera. Evolution. 71-3: 582–594.
Cardillo, M. & Skeels, A. 2016. Spatial, phylogenetic, environmental and biological components of variation in extinction risk: a case study using Banksia. PLoS ONE. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0154431.
Invited Talks
Center for Biodiversity and Global Change, Yale. Understanding the evolution of biodiversity with process-based simulation models (2022).
Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine (LECA). Inferring the tempo and mode of speciation using simulation-based approaches (2022).
British Ecological Society Macroecology Meeting, St. Andrews, United Kingdom (2018), Student Plenary Award.
Tempo and Mode Seminar Series, Australian National University (2018).
Conference Talks and Presentations
Biology ’22. Meeting of the Swiss Zoological, Botanical, and Systematics Societies (2022)
(Virtual) British Ecological Society Macroecology Meeting (2021)
(Virtual) Evolution (2021)
World Congress of Herpetology, Dunedin, New Zealand (2020)
International Biogeography Society Meeting, Malaga, Spain (2019)
Poster: Australasian Evolution Society, Sydney, Australia (2019)
British Ecological Society Macroecology Meeting, St. Andrews, United Kingdom (2018)
ANU Research School of Biology HDR Student Conference (2016, 2017, 2018).
Awards and Grants
Student Plenary Award, British Ecological Society Macroecology Meeting (2018)
Graduate Student Research Award, Society of Systematic Biologists (2018)
Poster Award, Australasian Evolution Society (2019)
Reviews
Publons; Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, Global Ecology and Biogeography, Evolution, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Journal of Biogeography, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Biodiversity and Conservation, PLOS One
Teaching
2020-current: Teaching assistant ETH Zurich
701-1679-00L Spatial Modelling: From Climate & Land Use Change to Biodiversity Conservation
2019: Guest Lecturer, Australian National University.
BIOL3206 Macroevolution and Macroecology
2016-2019: Teaching assistant, Australian National University.
BIOL3206 Evolution of Biodiversity
ENVS1003 Introduction to Environmental and Social Research
BIOL2161 Principals of Genetics
BIOL8702 Advanced Research Techniques
Outreach
National Youth Science Forum presentation, “What is Computational Biology?” 2017
Alex Skeels 