About

Chela Sandoval is a professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her specialization includes Bio-Semiotics and Film Aesthetics; Third Space Feminist & LGBTQI Histories; Science Futurism; Performance, SWAPA Story-Telling and Autohistoria-Teoría; Critical Indigenous Studies; Anzaldúan Planetary Liberation Philosophies; De-Colonizing Theories and Methods; and Meta-History (Tropology). She holds a B.A. and B.S. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and completed advanced graduate work in Film Theory at the University of California, Berkeley, culminating in a Ph.D. from UC Santa Cruz. Her research interests encompass cyber and millennial studies, third space feminism, critical media theory and production, oppositional consciousness, and social movement theory. Sandoval has contributed to the field through her publications, including the book series 'Methodology of the Oppressed' and various essays on cyborg feminism, technology, and social transformation.

Research topics

• Biology
• Evolutionary biology
• Ecology
• Zoology
• Genetics

Selected publications

• DNA barcoding of more than one million insect specimens indicates that at least one third of California's insect biodiversity remains undiscovered

  2025-12-05

  articleOpen access

  Insects are the most diverse terrestrial organisms, yet they are underrepresented in large-scale conservation assessments. To address this gap, the California Insect Barcoding Initiative is developing a publicly accessible, statewide DNA-barcode reference library for California insects to support scalable surveys, establish baseline biodiversity measurements, and generate potential distribution maps that inform conservation planning. Specimens are collected with a hybrid strategy that combines standardized Malaise trapping, to enable replicable sampling, and opportunistic collecting, to maximize taxonomic coverage. To date, we have barcoded over one million specimens; preliminary completeness analyses suggest that current sampling captures roughly 65–69% of the fauna, implying a conservative minimum of circa 61,000 insect species in California. Using all sequenced specimen records, we generated rule-based spatial range interpolations constrained by ecoregion and vegetation type, and used these to infer spatial patterns in insect species richness across the state. We identify areas of both high and low potential species richness, with current peaks in the Southern California Mountains ecoregion and the Mojave Basin and Range ecoregion. Our species richness estimates and spatial patterns are explicitly provisional and are expected to evolve as sampling gaps are addressed. Finally, we make all sequence data, specimen images, and occurrence records publicly available via the Barcode of Life Datasystem. This ongoing effort constitutes the first large-scale DNA barcode-based survey for California insects, providing an expandable foundation for tracking temporal change, testing drivers of insect diversity, and prioritizing regions for conservation and targeted inventory.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Transitions between phases of genomic differentiation during stick-insect speciation

  UNC Libraries · 2020-04-18

  articleOpen access

  Speciation can involve a transition from a few genetic loci that are resistant to gene flow to genome-wide differentiation. However, only limited data exist concerning this transition and the factors promoting it. Here, we study phases of speciation using data from >100 populations of 11 species of Timema stick insects. Consistent with early phases of genic speciation, adaptive colour-pattern loci reside in localized genetic regions of accentuated differentiation between populations experiencing gene flow. Transitions to genome-wide differentiation are also observed with gene flow, in association with differentiation in polygenic chemical traits affecting mate choice. Thus, intermediate phases of speciation are associated with genome-wide differentiation and mate choice, but not growth of a few genomic islands. We also find a gap in genomic differentiation between sympatric taxa that still exchange genes and those that do not, highlighting the association between differentiation and complete reproductive isolation. Our results suggest that substantial progress towards speciation may involve the alignment of multi-faceted aspects of differentiation.

  PublisherDOI

• Whole-genome transplant-and-sequence experiment

  DRYAD · 2017-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Perfuming trials with no-choice copulation experiments

  DRYAD · 2017-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Data from: Transitions between phases of genomic differentiation during stick-insect speciation

  Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) · 2017-02-05 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Speciation can involve a transition from a few genetic loci that are resistant to gene flow to genome-wide differentiation. However, only limited data exist concerning this transition and the factors promoting it. Here, we study phases of speciation using data from >100 populations of 11 species of Timema stick insects. Consistent with early phases of genic speciation, adaptive colour-pattern loci reside in localized genetic regions of accentuated differentiation between populations experiencing gene flow. Transitions to genome-wide differentiation are also observed with gene flow, in association with differentiation in polygenic chemical traits affecting mate choice. Thus, intermediate phases of speciation are associated with genome-wide differentiation and mate choice, but not growth of a few genomic islands. We also find a gap in genomic differentiation between sympatric taxa that still exchange genes and those that do not, highlighting the association between differentiation and complete reproductive isolation. Our results suggest that substantial progress towards speciation may involve the alignment of multi-faceted aspects of differentiation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Programs and scripts for processing and analysing data

  DRYAD · 2017-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Whole-genome analyses of published T. cristinae genomes

  DRYAD · 2017-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) and stages of speciation

  DRYAD · 2017-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• GWAS of CHCs and colour pattern

  DRYAD · 2017-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Evolution of reproductive isolation and phenotypic differentiation through time

  DRYAD · 2017-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Patrik Nosil

  Institut de Recherche pour le Développement

  27 shared

• Bernard J. Crespi

  Simon Fraser University

  27 shared

• Dorothea Lindtke

  Agroscope

  21 shared

• Rüdiger Riesch

  21 shared

• Víctor Soria‐Carrasco

  21 shared

• Rebecca J. Safran

  21 shared

• Regine Gries

  Simon Fraser University

  21 shared

• Aaron A. Comeault

  Bangor University

  21 shared