I joined the Biological Museum as an entomology curator in 2018. We have a large insect collection (about 5 million pinned specimens), including many primary types and important historical collections.
Research Interests
My main interests are systematics, historical biogeography, ecology, and morphology of various groups of Lepidoptera. I am especially interested in elucidating different aspects of the evolutionary history of a group, such as divergence times, changes in host plant use or morphological evolution, which can be done with a well-resolved molecular phylogeny in hand. Metalmark moths (Choreutidae), a mainly tropical family with a little over 400 species described, are my main focus, but I have also worked on a number of other groups of Lepidoptera (like non-ditrysians, acanthopteroctetids, totricids, butterflies, noctuids) and will continue to do so in the future.
Brief Biography
My interest in Lepidoptera developed while I was an undergraduate in Croatia at the University of Zagreb. I thoroughly enjoyed the research I did for my diploma thesis “Butterflies of Paklenica National Park” and I quickly became determined to base my career on similar research. As research opportunities in Croatia were somewhat limited, I decided to continue my studies elsewhere and I ended up going to the University of Connecticut to work with Dave Wagner as my advisor. In 2003 I completed my Master’s Thesis, and in 2007 my PhD, both focused on metalmark moths (Choreutidae).
From Connecticut, I went to Washington, D.C. for two years to work as a postdoc at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution), and from there I returned to Europe in 2010 for a two-year postdoc at the Danish Museum of Natural History in Copenhagen, where I worked with the late Niels Kristensen. From Denmark, I moved to Finland to the University of Turku, where I worked as an experienced researcher funded by the Kone Foundation for three years (2013–2015). Since the beginning of 2016, I have been employed as a researcher in Lund.