Andrew Zachary Ontano
​Graduate student
​Email: ontano at wisc dot edu

Curriculum vitae (updated Nov 2020)

My Masters research in San Diego focused on the use of molecular phylogenies to test hypotheses about co-speciation of feather mites and birds. At UW-Madison, I have been working on the phylogenetic placement of pseudoscorpions in the chelicerate tree of life. On the phylogenetic side, I am interested in how taxonomic sampling can be used to mitigate long branch attraction artifacts. On the evo-devo side, I am using developmental genetic data and rare genomic changes from a pseudoscorpion genome to test competing hypotheses of phylogenetic placement. Most of my fieldwork and benchwork have focused on the Western Australian species Conicochernes crassus, which I hope will become a useful model system for study of comparative arthropod development.

Research snapshots:

Collecting pseudoscorpions in Western Australia at dawn with Mark Harvey. August 2017.

Like scorpions and tetrapulmonates, pseudoscorpions like Conicochernes crassus (panel b) exhibit an array of complex reproductive behaviors, like courtship dances and brooding of embryos. From Ontano et al. (in review).