A Short Introduction

Hey hello!

Welcome to my blog-slash-website!

I'm Saphira, a (very) early career Australian researcher and grad student. I first dipped my toes into research in my first year of uni (2014!). My research interests are mainly around hybridisation and speciation - basically, how genetic information does and doesn't get shared between populations. I am also nursing a debilitating and growing infatuation with small, mostly green things that grow on the ground, trees, and rocks - lichens, moss, & ferns.

Rogaining (an Australian type of orienteering) in the bush back home.

I have a Bachelor's degree in genetics with Honours. During my Honours year, I researched coastal wildflowers to investigate whether the way DNA is arranged allows populations to adapt to different environmental conditions, even though they keep mixing up their genes with each other. After that, I travelled and then worked for over a year as a Research Assistant at a DNA sequencing facility.

I'm currently doing MEME - our pet name for the otherwise mouthful that is the Erasmus Mundus Joint Mobility Masters in Evolutionary Biology. Since 2020 I have moved every semester. I started in Uppsala (Sweden) where I took courses and did a little research on the re-colonization of Norway spruce into Sweden after that big glacier finally retreated across Europe 10,000 years ago. I then moved to Munich (Germany) where I took more classes and did another small research project, this time on the demographic history of the European crow complex. If you are to the left on the narrow hybrid zone that runs down Europe, you will be used to seeing crows which are all-black. If you are to the right, the crows you know are black & grey. A lot of people have been trying to figure out what exactly is going on and happened in their past. But the crows are keeping their secrets for now. Last semester, I did my first thesis in Berlin at the natural history museum, doing the first genetic study focused on the New Guinean jewel babbler complex (using historical DNA!). Now, I am in my last semester, doing my second and final thesis. This time, I am working on Selaginella, known as moss-ferns in German - they look like ferns but are not. There are nearly 700 species of them but they pretty much all look the same. I am compiling some data on traits from the literature and then trying to tie that information to dispersal.

I hope to use this blog to practice my science communication and share life as a young researcher/scientist and grad student. I will also talk about nature and science-adjacent topics like books, poems, hiking, and nature journalling. I post more snack-size content on my associated Instagram!

All content and opinions I post here are totally my own, and not affiliated with any university, institution, research group, or individual. Any errors are my own.