Lyn Cook

I obtained my PhD from The Australian National University in 2001 and have been at UQ since August 2006. My research is primarily aimed at understanding the origins, diversification and distributions of organisms, especially plants and insects in Australia. I mostly take a comparative approach and use molecular phylogenies to test hypotheses about ecological and evolutionary processes. Recent and ongoing topics include: understanding how interactions among plants and insects affect the evolutionary radiation of each; teasing apart the effects of extinction and speciation to understand how past climate and environmental change has shaped our biota; and investigating the relative roles of continental drift and long distance dispersal in explaining the current distribution patterns of organisms in the southern hemisphere. Specific questions relate, but are not limited, to topics such as: • how the diversification of the unique Australian flora has driven insect speciation • whether specific insect-plant interactions are the result of long term co-radiation or more recent adaptive radiations of insects • the relative roles of vicariance (such as that induced by continental drift) and dispersal in explaining the current distribution patterns of southern hemisphere organisms • evolutionary patterns of host-use by herbivores • how past climate change has shaped the current distributions of taxa • assembly of the flora and fauna of current biomes, especially the arid zone, monsoon tropics and southern temperate biomes • phylogeography of plants and insects, and what this reveals about contemporary and recent gene flow • consequences of differential dispersal, such as that between male and female scale insects, different developmental stages, or seed and pollen Evolution of biodiversity, Scale insect systematics, Plant systematics

[2026] Humble beginnings of the Australian giant wood moth (Endoxyla cinereus): A century‐old mystery solved [2026] Processionary caterpillars: ochrogaster lunifer , a cryptic species complex [2025] Resolving a curly problem: resurrection of Apiomorpha crispa (Fuller, 1896) reinst. stat. (Hemiptera: Coccomorpha) [2025] Using a null hypothesis framework to test expectations of disparity in an adaptive radiation [2025] Resolving relationships in the radiation of Australia’s largest pea clade (Fabaceae tribe Mirbelieae) with target-capture sequencing [2025] Eucalyptus was not the problem: A response to “The genus problem – Eucalyptus as a model system for minimising taxonomic disruption” by Nicolle & al [2025] Gondwanan relic or recent arrival? The biogeographic origins and systematics of