Bing Zhang

Collembola (Arthropoda: Hexapoda), known as springtails, are one of the most diverse and abundant soil animals. They have colonized the Earth since at least 400 million years and now are distributed globally, including Polar Regions. Recent genetic data provided a novel view on the taxonomy of Collembola, as well as on their biodiversity, phylogeny, biogeography, and evolution. Many widely distributed Collembola comprise high genetic diversity and intra-specific genetic divergence (up to 20% in COI). I explore the phylogenetic relationships between populations of different species over evolutionary time in order to understand the factors that are driving divergence and speciation, and the factors that shape the present-day spatial distribution of Collembola. I am also interested in phylogenomics, metabarcoding and metagenomics of a broad taxa of arthropods, on one hand strengthening our knowledge on the biodiversity, ecology, and evolution of soil arthropods, and on the other hand providing efficient species delimitation and assessment methods for soil ecological studies such as soil food web analysis (gut content analysis using metabarcoding), community ecology (metabarcoding combined with mitogenomics), and biogeography (phylogenomics).