Carlos Garcia-Robledo
Ph.D. Candidate
Aldridge Curator
The John C. Gifford Arboretum
University of Miami

Office: Cox Science 170
Phone: +1 (305) 284 53 64
Fax: +1 (305) 284 30 33
e-mail: carlos[at]bio[dot]miami[dot]edu

 

 

 

 

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I am a Ph.D. Student in Carol C. Horvitz's lab. My committee members are Drs. Theodore H. Fleming, Douglas Futuyma, Keith Waddington and Barbara Whitlock. This is my last year as a Ph.D. student, therefore most of my time is currently invested in writing my dissertation and looking for a post-doc.

I am broadly interested in the evolutionary consequences of ecological plant-animal interactions. For my dissertation I am studying the potential for evolution of novel plant-herbivore interactions in generalist and specialist insect herbivores. I am using a group of Neotropical beetles, the rolled-leaf beetles and their host plants from the order Zingiberales as a study sistem. Rolled-leaf beetles evolved in the Neotropics. However, several species of beetles are expanding their diets to exotic gingers recently introduced to tropical America.

I also use other tropical pollination, plant-herbivore and seed dispersal systems, as well as invasive plant species as study models to understand different processes involved in the ecology, evolution and conservation of tropical plant-animal interactions.