Charles investigates the biodiversity and evolutionary history of wild and domestic animals in Africa to positively impact conservation efforts for the sustainable utilization of genetic resources by using genomic data (typically mitochondrial DNA sequences) for genetic diversity assessment (nucleotide and haplotype diversity), population demography (Tajima’s D, Fu’s Fs tests), phylogenetic analysis (Neighbor-joining, Maximum likelihood, Bayesian inference trees and median–joining network) and estimation of divergence times (Bayesian analysis) . His research has provided comprehensive biodiversity data that has served as a baseline for initiating effective conservation policies. His work has focused on integration of genomic and transcriptome data using comparative and population genomic approaches to study the genomic basis of animal adaptive evolution in Africa. This study revealed that one of the positively selected genes (ADGRE1) in African dogs is association with severe malaria resistance in African human populations, supporting the dogs as a model for the study of malaria control and treatment.
Future projects are shifting towards Ecology and Evolution of cane rat, freshwater fish, herpetofauna and some arthropods. Effects of African environmental/ecological and geographic variations will be tested on the genetic diversity of these species. These studies will include species distribution modeling (SDM), current and projected future SDMs will be established using the BIOMOD2 package implemented in the statistical program R, version 3.3.0.