Team Members

Dr. Ethan Gyllenhaal is an ornithologist who studies how new species split, diverge, and persist. He uses museum collections, field work, and cutting-edge computational techniques to understand this process. Pacific islands such as Fiji and the Solomon Islands are his main region of interest, which serve as natural evolutionary laboratories for studying the process of species formation. He works to document the evolutionary diversity of island species, with a goal of understanding the role geography has in the evolutionary process.

Natural history collections are core to this whole process. From the start, patterns of variation among specimens already in collections document patterns of variation a species or group of species show. This can then inspire further fieldwork and act as a key source of data. Particularly, their genomes can be sequenced and analyzed on supercomputers to reveal their evolutionary history. Because of this, building collections is a key component of Dr. Gyllenhaal’s work, both through fieldwork and preparation of birds that fall victim to window strikes in Cleveland.

Dr. Gyllenhaal started his path at the Field Museum preparing bird specimens as a high schooler before studying ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Rochester as an undergraduate. He connected these two threads during his Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico and the Museum of Southwestern Biology, where his interest in island evolution flourished. He then continued this work on island birds as a postdoctoral fellow, where he worked with research groups at Texas Tech University and Cornell University to simulate the process of island evolution.

Research areas: ornithology, evolutionary diversity, island species

Dr. Miranda Sinnott-Armstrong is a plant evolutionary biologist whose research focuses on coloration. Although the colors of flowers and fruits are widely appreciated for their aesthetic appeal, coloration also plays a critical role in pollination and seed dispersal, as well as protecting reproductive organs from environmental stressors such as cold temperatures, drought, or UV. To understand ecological and evolutionary factors that underlie color diversity in plants, and especially in fruits, Dr. Sinnott-Armstrong’s work spans biological scales, from characterizing nanostructures that interfere with light to produce brilliantly metallic and iridescent colors (a phenomenon called structural color), to describing global-scale patterns in fruit coloration and the climatic conditions associated with those patterns. Uncovering the factors that lead to successful seed dispersal, and characterizing how plant-animal communication systems evolve, is critical to enhancing our understanding of the evolution and diversity of plants.

Dr. Sinnott-Armstrong received a B.Sc. in Environmental Science from Brown University, before pursuing a Ph.D. at Yale University in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. Before joining the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in July 2026, she completed postdocs jointly at the University of Colorado-Boulder and the University of Cambridge, then at Purdue University and Duke University.

Research areas: plant evolution, fruits, color

Dr. Walter Tapondjou is an evolutionary and conservation biologist who studies terrestrial vertebrates, mainly reptiles and amphibians, to understand how species diversify and adapt across landscapes through time. He surveys remote localities to collect data that allows him to discover new species, understand why some species are found in one place and nowhere else, and identify the factors responsible for species decline in tropical rainforests.

Dr. Tapondjou has led multiple research expeditions in West and Central Africa, the U.S., and Southeast Asia to advance museums’ research, collections, and public engagement focused on biodiversity, systematics, ecology, and the conservation of biological diversity. He is exploring the evolution of endemic chameleons, skinks, and polyploid frogs with a particular interest in the African sky island systems. He is particularly interested in connecting biodiversity research with opportunities to train the next generation of scientists and to make natural history collections more accessible and relevant to the public and to contemporary research and conservation.

Dr. Tapondjou earned his Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Kansas, and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees both in Zoology from the University of Yaoundé 1 in Cameroon. After his Ph.D., he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Florida Museum of Natural History of the University of Florida. Before joining the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, he served as an Assistant Professor of Wildlife Biology and Conservation in the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at East Texas A&M University.

Research areas: biodiversity, vertebrate systematics, evolution, refugia, conservation biology, species interactions, natural history collections, field biology, genomics