PBS 'Bugs that Rule the World' covers my research on insect weapons
THEMES WE EXPLORE
Natural History
Insect Physiology
Sexual Selection
Insect Behavior
Morphological Evolution
The energetic costs of sexually selected traits. Design by Anita Weissflog.
paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bies.202000183
Research
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Sexual selection has long been defined in opposition to ecological selection, suggesting that such traits may limit or constrain ecological adaptation. However, sexual selection drives elaborate growth, enhances neuromuscular physiology, and shapes extreme diversification with clades. My research takes an integrative approach to understand the ways in which growth, selection, behavior, and phylogenic history shape the evolution of sexually selected traits in complex ecological contexts. As an organismal biologist I focus on highly understudied non-model insects that provide novel perspectives to our understanding of animal diversity.
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New bug reared in The Bug Hut
Beetles weapons in the insect collections
Excited to be working with the Hemiptera collections with student intern Christine Kakan at the National Museums of Kenya (Aug 2023)
Presenting my work on the hidden diversity of
insect sexual signals at the Smithsonian Tropical
Research Institute, Panama (Sept 2023)
Learning about the generational culture of beetle-wrestling in Northern Thailand with PBS-Bugs that Rule the world (2025) - See episode here
Bugs are Repositories of Wonder; I was invited as the Keynote Speaker at BugFest at the Natural History Museum of Utah. (2025).
See video below : Our paper was published in Evolution about Panama's jousting weevils.
video by Peter Marting - https://aztecacecropia.com/ see Somjee et al. Evolution. 2024
POSITIONS & CONTACT
Nomis-Smithsonian Postdoctoral Scholar (2025)
Nomis Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland &
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Gamboa, Panama
Stengl-Wyer Scholar (2022)
University of Texas, Austin, TX
Earl S. Tupper Post-Doctoral Fellow (2018)
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Gamboa, Panama
