Visiting Scientist Feature – Dr. James Rosindell

Recently, Dr. James Rosindell from the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Imperial College London dropped by for a quick visit!

Dr. Rosindell is a biodiversity theorist with a research focus on evolutionary biology. He is currently supervising a PhD student (Ricky Gumbs) who is working on a database of venomous snakes all over the world. It is hoped that this database will help aid our understanding of viper evolution and trait diversity.

Upon knowing that Dr. Rosindell would be dropping by NUS to meet Dr. Ryan Chisholm (from the Department of Biological Sciences), Ricky asked for a favour to take measurements of venomous vipers in our Zoological Reference Collection (ZRC).

During the 2-day visit, Dr. Rosindell examined 20 species of venomous vipers from the ZRC, recording various measurements, such as eye diameter, head width and length, snout-vent width and various scale counts. He particularly enjoyed having the opportunity to measure a type specimen for the database.

It was a pleasure hosting Dr. Rosindell, and we hope to see him again!