Currently my main interest is documenting the remarkable diversity of catfishes and elucidating their evolutionary relationships using morphology. This involves both field work to collect new specimens as well as detailed examinations of preserved specimens from museums around the world. My speciality are catfishes of the families Aspredinidae (South American banjo catfishes), Mochokidae (African squeakers and suckermouth catfishes) and Amphiliidae (African loach catfishes and whiptail catfishes). All of these groups contain new species that I am studying and formally describing.
This research is part of the All Catfish Species Inventory (ACSI), a global effort to facilitate the discovery, description and dissemination of knowledge of all catfish species. This five year project has recently been funded by the National Science Foundation and involves over 200 participants from around the world. As one of the principal investigators of the ACSI project, I`m conducting major expeditions to collect fishes in East and Central Africa.
