Sean A. S. Anderson

Click for CV

I am an evolutionary biologist and evolutionary ecologist studying the processes that generate species richness. My research focuses on speciation and the evolution of coexistence between close relatives, and a key aim of my work is to draw statistical generalizations about the hypothesized drivers of these two processes.

To this end, I develop new analytical tools to address fundamental questions like "is ecology-based divergent selection generally required for speciation?" and "do the processes promoting coexstence tend to differ across environments?". I deploy these and other tools to study various aspects of the ecology and evolution of real organisms using data that I collect from the field, the lab, and from museum specimens. I am particularly interested in diversification dynamics in non-model systems — lineages that evolve and speciate in the complex continental settings home to most of life.

I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Daniel Matute's lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I recently (June 2022) completed my PhD working with Jason Weir at the University of Toronto. Part of my goal with the Matute group is to tease out the general processes behind the evolution of intrinsic reproductive barriers, which are difficult to reverse and are therefore likely to be important to the long-term build-up of lasting biodiveristy.