Alexandra Tokareva

(PhD, entomologist)

e-mail:

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9753-5201
ResearcherID: C-8671-2019
Born on 22 May 1997 in Moscow, Russia.
Languages spoken: Russian, English (C1), Polish (basic).

Education

2020—2024 PhD in Biology, specialization in Phylogenomics and Taxonomy of Staphylinidae. Museum and Institute of Zoology, Warsaw, Poland. PhD thesis: “A comprehensive genus-level phylogeny of Paederinae (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) based on combined genomic and morphological data” [available here: https://bip.miiz.waw.pl/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/A.Tokareva_PhD-thesis_digital.pdf]. PhD project’s supervisors: Dr. Dagmara Żyła, Coleoptera collection Curator, Leibniz Institute of the Analysis of Biodiversity Change, Zoological Museum Hamburg, Germany; Prof. dr. hab. K. Wioletta Tomaszewska, Museum and Institute of Zoology, Warsaw, Poland.

2018—2020 MSc in Biology, specialization in Entomology. Saint Petersburg State University Saint Petersburg, Russia. MSc thesis: “Oxyporinae (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) of the Russian fauna: taxonomy, biology and new data for phylogeny of the subfamily” (in Russian). Scientific advisor: Dr. Alexey Solodovnikov, Associate Professor & Coleoptera collection Curator, Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark.

2014—2018 BSc in Biology, specialization in Mycology. Saint Petersburg State University Saint Petersburg, Russia. BSc thesis: “Aphyllophoroid fungi of oak forests of the Central Chernozem Region (case study of “Belogorye” and “Galichya Gora” nature reserves” (in Russian).

Research interests

Phylogenomics, Taxonomy, Rove beetles, Comparative morphology, Biogeography.

Field experience

More than 10 field trips for collecting rove beetles, particularly in Russian Far East, Siberia, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Israel, Thailand, USA.

Skills

Insects collecting:
Light trapping; installation of pitfall traps and Malaise traps; collecting by leaf-litter sifters and Winkler eclectors; insect net collecting; collecting by splashing; collecting by hand; fungal fauna rearing.
Dry Laboratory (Bioinformatics):
Sanger raw reads quality check and manual curation; quality check and raw genomic reads assemblage, NGS QC, SPAdes, QUAST, Trimmomatic, PROKKA, etc.; custom UCEs and COI target baits design and target loci gathering from Illumina sequencing data via PHYLUCE pipeline, ONTbarcoder usage for MinION output.
Wet Laboratory:
More than 10 years of lab experience; DNA extraction with standard and non-destructive protocols from ethanol-preserved and dry-pinned museum material (rove beetles & plant bugs), PCR amplification, NGS libraries preparation for sensitive museum material, target enrichment performance, ONT MinION sequencing.
Morphology and Taxonomy:
Know-how of a new method of effective aedeagal internal sac everting; morphological matrix construction; rearing of Oxyporus beetles from larvae; morphological studies with light and electronic microscopy.
Phylogenetics:
Phylogenetic trees reconstruction with Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian Inference analyses for combined molecular and morphological data; ancestral states reconstruction.
Museum collection curation:
Collection database design and curation; minimally destructive genitalia dissection; type material dissection and re-mounting.

Publications

Tokareva, A., Żyła, D., (submitted). Comparative morphology of mesoventrite in Paederinae: insights for subtribal-level phylogenetic reconstructions. —

Tokareva, A., Koszela, K., Guzman, C. Y., Żyła, D., (in prep.). Reconstruction of the genus-level dated phylogeny of Paederinae (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) based on genomic (UCEs) and morphological data. —

Guzman, Y. C., Tokareva, A., Koszela, K., Żyła, D., 2024. Twenty-one new species of the Neotropical rove beetle genus Neolindus Scheerpeltz (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae, Paederinae). — European Journal of Taxonomy, 942: 1—76. doi:10.5852/ejt.2024.942.2581

Tokareva, A., Koszela, K., Ferreira, V. S., Yamamoto, S., Żyła, D., 2023. The oldest case of paedomorphosis in rove beetles and description of a new genus of Paederinae from Cretaceous amber (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae). — Scientific Reports 13 (1): 5317. doi:10.1038/s41598-023-32446-2

Beeren, C., Pohl, S., Fikáček, M., Kleinfelder, S., Tishechkin, A. K., Yamamoto, S., Chani-Posse, M., Żyła, D., Tokareva, A., Maruyama, M., Hall, W. E., Sandoval, L.P., Kronauer, D. J. C., 2023. Army ant middens — Home and nursery of a diverse beetle fauna. — Ecology and Evolution, 13 (9): e10451. doi:10.1002/ece3.10451

Żyła, D., Tokareva, A., Koszela, K., 2022. Phylogenetic position of genera Acrostilicus Hubbard and Pachystilicus Casey (Staphylinidae, Paederinae) and their redescription. — European Journal of Taxonomy, 819: 1—22. doi:10.5852/ejt.2022.819.1773

Zaytsev, A., Tokareva, A., 2021. Larval description of Nodynus leucofasciatus Lewis, 1879 (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Apateticinae) with discussion of Staphylinidae chaetotaxy. — Russian Entomological Journal, 30 (4): 482—499. doi:10.15298/rusentj.30.4.10

Tokareva, A., Konstantinov, F. V., Brunke, A. J., Solodovnikov, A., 2021. DNA-barcode and endophallus morphology delimit congruent species in a systematic revision of the oxyporine rove beetles of Russia (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Oxyporinae). — Contributions to Zoology, 90 (3): 344—407. doi:10.1163/18759866-bja10020

Navarrete-Heredia, J. L., Tokareva, A., Arriaga-Varela, E., Newton, A. F., Solodovnikov, A., 2021. Possible stridulatory organs in oxyporine rove beetles (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae), their biological role and systematic significance. — Journal of Natural History, 55 (33—34): 2129—2143. doi:10.1080/00222933.2021.1983061

Tokareva, A., Solodovnikov, A., Konstantinov, F., 2020. Immature stages and biology of the enigmatic oxyporine rove beetles, with new data on Oxyporus larvae from the Russian Far East (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae). — Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae, 60 (1): 245—268. doi:10.37520/aemnp.2020.014