I am driven by a curiosity of how the patterns of nature’s diversity can be explained. Why do some lineages radiate into several niche specialists whereas others remain as a single generalist lineage? Why are some species range-restricted while other have a global distribution? What factors can explain—and predict(?)—the outcome when closely related taxa meet, leading to homogenization of the lineages, or character displacement and/or reinforcement? How are these processes of differentiation, which can be readily observed in the phenotype, reflected at a molecular level? And, contrary to differentiation, are convergent phenotypes due to similar selective pressures in distantly related lineages also converging at the genomic level? I am currently the Senior Curator of Birds at National Museums Scotland (Edinburgh) and maintain my affiliation with the Bird Group at the Natural History Museum (Tring/London), where I recently held a Marie Curie Research Fellowship to study the genomic underpinnings of the parallel evolution towards loss of flight in island rails. For more information, see www.stervander.com. My PhD at Lund University was on the genomics/genetics of speciation in birds, with a focus on ecological speciation, followed by brief postdoctoral work on immune gene evolution, followed by a Swedish Research Council International Postdoc Fellowship at University of Oregon, where I tried to better understand the genomics of craniofacial development in syngnathid fish. In addition to my research, I am a keen ornithologist with a broad interest in ecology and evolutionary biology. I have worked at Ottenby Bird Observatory, from which I have used data in studies on phenology and migration ecology.