Dr. Joshua Peñalba er/ihn

Scientist

Joshua.Penalba@mfn.berlin8876
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Area:
Dynamics of Nature
Department:
Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery

My research focuses on understanding the evolutionary mechanisms underlying population divergence and speciation. I am broadly interested in the role of geography and the genome in shaping divergence and gene flow during the speciation process. Using a comparative approach, I study multiple hybrid zones between populations at different stages of speciation to get a broader perspective of the speciation process. The main themes of my research group include speciation, population genomics, biogeography, genome evolution, and hybridization. Additionally, my position at the CIBD focuses on molecular method development and optimization in museomics and high-throughput sequencing for various taxonomic groups. With this, we aim to leverage the genomic information locked in museum specimens for various research questions in taxonomy, ecology and evolution.
 

Vita

"2021 – present: Research scientist in Museomics; Center for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery; Museum für Naturkunde.
2017 – 2020: Postdoctoral Researcher; Division of Evolutionary Biology; Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München. PI: Prof. Jochen Wolf
2013 – 2017: PhD Candidate; Research School of Biology, Australian National University (ANU); Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).  Advisors: Prof. Craig Moritz & Dr. Leo Joseph
2008 – 2013: B.A. Integrative Biology; University of California, Berkeley."
 

Publications

Riccardi, P., de Souza Amorim, D., Bayless, K., Peñalba, J. (2025). Grass fly evolution unlocked: phylogenomics and classification of worldwide Chloropidae (Diptera) [Preprint]. bioRxiv. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.09.30.679457

Wait, D.R., Peñalba, J.V. (2024). Suture zones, speciation, and evolution. Evolution, 79(3), 329-341. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/evolut/qpae184Open Access

Ferrari, G., Esselens, L., Hart, M.L., Janssens, S., Kidner, C., Mascarello, M., Peñalba, J., Pezzini, F., Von Rintelen, T., Sonet, G., Vangestel, C., Virgilio, M., Hollingsworth, P. (2023). Developing the Protocol Infrastructure for DNA Sequencing Natural History Collections. Biodiversity Data Journal, 11, e102317. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.11.e102317Open Access

Peñalba, J.V., Runemark, A., Meier, J.I., Singh, P., Wogan, G.O.U., Sánchez-Guillén, R., Mallet, J., Rometsch, S.J., Menon, M., Seehausen, O., Kulmuni, J., Pereira, R.J. (2024). The Role of Hybridization in Species Formation and Persistence.. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology, 16(12). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a041445