Neil Chilton

Research interests

My research interests in parasitology involve several inter-related disciplines (e.g. evolutionary ecology, systematics, population genetics, and molecular biology) and span from the molecular level (e.g., mutational and structural changes in DNA genes) to whole organisms (e.g., detection of cryptic species, mechanisms maintaining species distributions, mechanisms of speciation, life history strategies, host-parasite co-evolution and co-speciation, phylogeography and the population genetics of vector-borne diseases). My approach has been to use traditional and molecular techniques to examine applied problems (e.g., the identification of parasites of medical and/or veterinary importance), and fundamental questions relating to the evolutionary ecology and systematics of parasites. Although the main parasite groups of interest are nematodes and ixodid ticks, I have been involved in collaborative projects on cestodes, trematodes, protozoa and bacteria.