Benjamin  R. Karin, PhD

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and spent much of my time exploring the mountains of California. However, it wasn't until college that I flipped a log to find and hold my first salamander as part of a natural history field course. In my senior year, I joined a four months‑long research expedition to Indonesia to investigate biogeography and diversification. The forest was bursting with life in every shape and color—from the vivid blue, red, and yellow throats of Eutropis skinks to the elongated hindlimbs and magnified size of undescribed lizards high in clouded peaks.

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I realized that understanding these traits required robust evolutionary frameworks. Pursuing my master’s and PhD, I built understudied Southeast Asian lizard systems from the ground up: field sampling, reconstructing phylogenetic trees, delimiting species, describing new taxa, and integrating genomics with morphological and geographic data for comparative analyses. I realized that existing molecular approaches weren’t built for the scale and ambition of my projects—thousands of samples, stubborn phylogenetic problems—so I developed optimized phylogenomic datasets and scalable mitochondrial genome sequencing methods that enabled evolutionary inferences previously out of reach. My dissertation on Sulawesi’s skinks applied these advancements to uncover how ancient island fusion and mountain building caused hybridization that drove morphological divergence and speciation.

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Now, applying these methodological advancements to these and new self-established study systems, my ongoing research targets exceptional traits and experimental systems worldwide. Using cutting edge methods such as population and comparative genomics, cellular imaging, and transcriptomics, I investigate the genetic basis of traits such as color and the complex regulation of diverse yet interconnected physiological pathways. Shaped by the value of field discovery and comparative analysis, I integrate across disciplines to address fundamental questions in adaptation and diversification. I am eager to expand my approach building off my strong international collaborative network to advance evolutionary genetics research.

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Through this work I have a developed a large and global collaborative network. I am a National Geographic Explorer, member of the IUCN Skink Specialist group, and part of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkeley.