Research Interests

Tropical forests are storehouses of biodiversity. Identifying the ecological and evolutionary drivers of these diversity patterns continues to be of interest to ecologists and evolutionary biologists. In Asian tropics, new species of animals and plants continue to be discovered. Our lab aims at
1) systematic documentation of tropical diversity in an integrative taxonomic approach,
2) identifying the underlying geological, evolutionary and ecological processes that govern the diversity patterns and
3) identify the processes that govern the assembly of species in these forests.

We integrate a diverse set of approaches, including molecular phylogeny, traditional specimen-based taxonomy, molecular systematics, phylogenetic comparative methods, and species distribution modeling. More details on the past and ongoing research are here

Selected Publications

Joshi J., & Edgecombe G. 2019. Evolutionary Biogeography of the centipede genus Ethmostigmus from Peninsular India: Testing an Ancient Vicariance Hypothesis for Old World Tropical Speciation. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 19: 41

Gaitonde N., Joshi J., & Kunte K. 2018. Exploring evolution of defense ensembles among Papilionidae butterflies Ecology and Evolution, 32: 601-611

Joshi J., Prakash A., & Kunte K. 2017. Evolutionary assembly of butterfly mimetic community in the Western Ghats, India American Naturalist, 189, E58-E76. Won the ASN Presidential Award 2018.

Joshi J., & Karanth P. 2013. Did southern Western Ghats of peninsular India serve as refugia for its endemic biota during the Cretaceous volcanism? Ecology and Evolution 3, 3275- 3282.

Joshi J., & Karanth P. 2011. Cretaceous-Tertiary diversification among select Scolopendrid centipedes of South India. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 60, 287-294.