There’s a term for those studies too, it’s called evolutionary biologist. Diversity studies are generally done through genetic studies, which requires fundamental knowledge about bioinformatics and statistics. I would call them more geneticist and bioinformaticist than ecologist, like your collaborators down the hall. And how are you suppose to come up with these models without a strong foundation in statistics. There’s a lot of things that’s more “in” than ecology like Neuro/microbiome/immunotherapy. Just go look at the HHMI list on your free time.
Oh and for your information, I did structural bio/pathway signaling and basics mechanism research.