I am a postdoctoral fellow at STRI working in hybrid speciation. My research focuses on establishing the speciation mechanism in cases where recent adaptive radiation occurs.

Heliconius displays an astonishing geographic variability on wing coloration patterns associated to mimetic rings. This kind of mimetic adaptation promotes speciation by sexual selection as a byproduct on the melpomene group. Also, the main species in this group, Heliconius melpomene, shows a speciation history in presence of gene flow with the paraphyletic species H. cydno. Furthermore, occasional adaptive introgression shared among these species could contributes to mimetic pattern convergence and new color patterns formation like the observed in other related species as H. heurippa.

Tools that I have used to establish the degree of speciation on this genus includes the basic study of genetic bases of reproductive isolation, quantification of mating preferences and the relation of both of them with color patterns, host plant preferences and phylogeographic patterns together with genetic populations divergence (GDP).

CV

2008-Present, Post-doc, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute-University of Cambridge (Panamá and Cambridge, UK)

2007, Invited professor, Biological Sciences, Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá-Colombia)

2003-2006, PhD, Biological Sciences. Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá-Colombia)

1999-2002, MSc, Biological Sciences. Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá-Colombia)

1995-1998, BSc ,Microbiology. Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá-Colombia)

Publications

[bibliplug last_name='Salazar']