Author
Romain Boisseau
I am currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), advised by Tanja Schwander, with support from the SNSF Swiss Postdoctoral Fellowship. Before this, I completed my PhD at the University of Montana (USA) under the supervision of Doug Emlen. Prior to Montana, I studied biology at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris (France) and earned a master’s degree in Ecology, Biodiversity, and Evolution, which included several research projects around the world.
CV
Current students
Margherita Zgheib
Margherita is a Behaviour, Evolution and Conservation (BEC) master student at the University of Lausanne. She received a BA in biology from the Lebanese American University in Beirut (Lebanon). Her research aims at linking the variation in mate guarding behaviors seen across species of stick insects to sperm precedence patterns.
Former students
Makena Carlsberg
Makena was an undergraduate student at the University of Montana who worked on the physiological consequences of leg autotomy in thorny devil stick insects.
Madeline Kleeman
Madeline was an undergraduate student at the University of Montana who worked on male-male competition in leaf insects. She is now a museum interpreter and naturalist at the Missoula Butterfly House and Insectarium.
Nathan Barton
Nate was an undergraduate student at the University of Montana who worked on courtship behaviors and female choice in rhinoceros beetles [talk].
Lexi Klawitter
Lexi was an honors undergraduate student at the University of Montana who worked on flight performance in male leaf insects. She won best poster at the UM Conference on Undergraduate Research. She is now a physical therapist in Livingston, MT.
Garret Jolma
Garret was an honors undergraduate student at the University of Montana who worked on egg water loss and absorption in thorny devil stick insects [poster]. He is now a museum assistant at the Yale Peabody Museum in Connecticut.
Advisors
Tanja Schwander
Tanja is a Professor at the University of Lausanne. Her research mainly focuses on the evolution of reproductive systems in animals (e.g., sexual reproduction, parthenogenesis), notably using stick insects. I joined Tanja's group in 2023 to carry out my project on the evolution of convergent wing phenotypes in stick insects. In parallel, we work together on the macroevolutionary drivers of parthenogenesis.
Doug Emlen
Doug is a regents professor at the University of Montana (USA) and member of the US National Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on the development and evolution of exaggerated animal weaponry. I joined Doug's lab in 2015 for six months when I worked on the biomechanics and physiology of hindleg weapons in leaf footed bugs. Following this, I decided to pursue a PhD in his lab starting in 2016, during which I explored the drivers of morphological diversity seen across stick insects, both at the macro- and microevolutionary levels (among other things!).
Marlène Goubault-Body
Marlène is a professor at the Research Institute on Insect Biology (IRBI) at the University of Tours (France). Her research focuses on animal conflicts and game theory. I joined Marlène's team in 2016 to complete a master's project on the physiological costs of fighting in parasitic wasps.
Art Woods
Art is an emeritus professor at the University of Montana (USA). His research focuses on the biophysics and physiology of interactions between animals and their environments, and on the respiratory physiology of insects. Art supervised many of my projects dealing with metabolism during my time at the University of Montana and co-supervised my work in Tours with Marlène Goubault-Body. Together, we worked on stick insect egg physiology and the metabolic costs of weapons and fighting in various insects.
Audrey Dussutour
Audrey is a CNRS researcher at the University of Toulouse, Paul Sabatier (France). Her research aims to understand how distributed systems, whether ant colonies or unicellular organisms, interact with their environment. I joined Audrey's team in 2014 to work on the learning capacities of slime molds.
Shawn Wilder
Shawn is an associate professor at Oklahoma State University (USA). His research focuses on how trophic interactions (especially arthropod predator-prey) affect the flow of nutrients through food webs and ecosystems. I worked with Shawn in 2014 on the fitness consequences of sexual cannibalism in redback spiders, when he was an ARC DECRA Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Sydney (Australia).
Kate Barry
Kate was a professor at Macquarie University, Sydney (Australia). Her research focused on the evolutionary outcome of reproductive conflict between and within the sexes. She has now quit academia to become a functional medicine nutritionist. Kate co-supervised me with Shawn Wilder in 2014 on my project dealing with the fitness consequences of sexual cannibalism in redback spiders.
Mónica Arias
Mónica is a researcher at the Plant Health Institute of Montpellier (France) and the CIRAD representative at the Latin American Agroforestry Scientific Network (AgroForesta). Her research has focused how ecological interactions promote the evolution of biodiversity, mostly in insects in tropical ecosystems. She supervised me during her PhD in the field in Peru in 2013. Together we worked on measuring the fitness of different wing color patterns in Heliconius butterflies.
Violaine Llaurens
Violaine is a CNRS researcher at the Collège de France in Paris (France). Her research focuses on the diversification of traits and species in natural communities. She supervised me and Mónica Arias while we were in the field in Peru working on measuring the fitness of different wing color patterns in Heliconius butterflies.
Collaborators
Sven Bradler
Sven is a professor at the University of Göttingen (Germany). His research focuses on the macroevolutionary patterns of taxononomic diversity, morphological disparity and biogeographic distribution in a phylogenetic framework, using stick insects. Sven has been an invaluable collaborator since I started my PhD by providing many specimens of stick insects and sharing his resources on this insect group.
Thies Büscher
Thies is a research assistant at the University of Kiel, Germany. He is a functional morphologist interested in how arthropods interact with surfaces in their environment, with a focus on attachment devices. He uses stick insects as a model system and is the curator of the main stick insect taxonomic database (Phasmida Species File). Thies and I often interact to develop a phasmid trait database and we also joined efforts to study the biomechanics of movement in leaf insects.
Mark Ero
Mark is an entomologist at the Pacific Community managing a response project to the invasion of the Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle in the Pacific. Mark used to be the head of entomology at the Papua New Guinea Oil Palm Research Association. Mark provided guidance and help during my field trip in Papua New Guinea in 2018 to investigate the natural history of thorny devil stick insects.
Bret Tobalske
Bret is a professor at the University of Montana (USA). His research focuses on the biomechanics and physiology of flight. We worked together on the biomechanics of flight in leaf insects and measuring the squeezing strength of insect hindleg weapons.
Special mentions
Camille Thomas-Bulle
Camille is my life partner and wife. Many of my accomplishments would not have been possible without her love and support. She is also an evolutionary biologist, interested in the evolution of weapons and adaptations to extreme environments from genomic, population genetics, and behavioral ecology perspectives. She is currently a bioinformatician in Tanja Schwander's group.
Spooky
Spooky is a full-time cat and part-time research advisor, holding a PhD in Meowlogy from the University of Montana (USA) where she was rescued on Halloween night. She is an expert in supervising work from the couch, providing critical keyboard input, and enforcing mandatory cuddle breaks.