Position: Postdoc
Email: benkarin@berkeley.edu
Office: 217 Hilgard Hall
Research Interests: Biogeography, Phylogenomics, Lizards in Indonesia and Malaysia, Genotype-Phenotype
View Ben’s website here.
Research Description: Ben studies the evolution, systematics, biogeography, and genetic basis of traits in lizards. He develops new phylogenomics methods and uses them to investigate the processes that generate lineages and species across Southeast Asian islands. He is currently an NSF postdoctoral fellow in the Wang Lab investigating the genetic basis of coloration in several lizards and snakes around the world, including Plestiodon gilberti, a California skink that contains red and blue variation in tail color.
Selected Honors & Awards:
NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship (2023)
UC Berkeley Philomathia Fellowship (2019)
UC Berkeley – Berkeley Fellowship (2016)
Recent Publications:
Karin B.R., Krone I.W, Frederick J.H., Hamidy A., Laksono T.W., Amini S.S., Arida E., Arifin U., Bach B.H., Bos C., Jennings C., Riyanto A., Scarpetta S., Stubbs A.L., McGuire J.A. 2023. Elevational surveys of Sulawesi herpetofauna 1: Gunung Galang, Gunung Dako Nature Reserve. PeerJ, 11:e15766. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.15766
Reilly S.B., Stubbs A.L., Karin B.R., Arida A., Arifin U., Amidy A., Kaiser H., Bi K., Riyanto A., Iskandar D.T., McGuire J.A. 2023. Bewildering biogeography: Waves of dispersal and diversification across southern Wallacea by bent-toed geckos (Genus: Cyrtodactylus). Molecular Phylogenetic and Evolution, 186:107853. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2023.107853
Karin B.R., Arellano S., Wang L., Walzer K., Pomerantz A., Vasquez J.M., Chatla K., Sudmant P.H., Bach B.H., Smith L.L., McGuire J.A. 2023. MtGenome for the cost of a gene: Long-amplicon PacBio and Nanopore sequencing of hundreds of full mitochondrial genomes. BMC Genomics, 24:229. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-023-09277-6
Davis H.R., Nashriq I., Woytek K.S., Wikramanayake S.A., Bauer A.M., Karin B.R., Brennan I.G., Iskandar D.T., Das I. 2023. Genomic investigation into Bornean geckos (Gekkonidae: Cyrtodactylus) highlights need for taxonomic reevaluation. Zoologica Scripta 00, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/zsc.12575
Slavenko A., Allison A., Austin C.C., Bauer A.M., Brown R.M., Fisher R.N., Ineich I., Iova B., Karin B.R., Kraus F., Mecke S., Meiri S., Morrison C., Oliver P.M., O’Shea M., Richmond J.Q., Shea G.M., Tallowin O.J.S., Chapple D.G. 2023 Skinks of Oceania, New Guinea, and Eastern Wallacea: an underexplored biodiversity hotspot. Pacific Conservation Biology https://doi.org/10.1071/PC22034
Karin B.R., Gamble T., Jackman T. 2020. Rapidly Evolving Long Exon Capture: A new sequence capture dataset for phylogenomics in amniotes. Molecular Biology and Evolution 37(3):904–922.