Project Title: Description of new species of anurans from Brazilian Amazonia through integrative taxonomy Faculty Sponsor: James Hanken
Miquéias is a biologist interested in taxonomy, systematics and ecology of Amazonian anurans and reptiles. Currently, most of his research focuses on using integrative taxonomy to identify, delimit and describe new species of frogs from threatened environments in Brazilian Amazonia, as well as redescribe taxonomically problematic species. He has described new treefrogs and toads of Allobates, Amazophrynella, Atelopus, Rhinella and Scinax. In addition to these genera, new species of Adenomera, Osteocephalus and Pristimantis are also being described by him.
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Stephen Pates
Project Title: Beyond the Burgess Shale and Chengjiang: Systematics, phylogeny and evolution of Radiodonta (stem-group Euarthropoda) from untapped Cambrian Lagerstätten Faculty Sponsor: Javier Ortega-Hernández
Stephen's research focusses on understanding the role of predation as an evolutionary driver of innovation in both predators and prey during the early Paleozoic. He explores the diversity, geographic spread, temporal distribution, and feeding methods of the radiodonts, a group that includes some of the largest known nektonic Cambrian predators (e.g. Anomalocaris). He studies trilobites as a prey animal, using quantitative methods to compare differences in their injury frequency, and assess potential antipredatory features
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Project Title: The long-term impact of a climate change-driven mass extinction on global biodiversity and evolutionary patterns in reptiles Faculty Sponsor: Stephanie Pierce
Tiago's research interests include combining data from living and extinct species, as well as morphological and molecular data, to investigate deep time problems in reptile evolution. In recent years, he has revised previous phylogenetic and biogeographic hypotheses into the early evolution of lizards in South America and used high resolution micro computed-tomography scans of modern lizards to assess the adaptive role of the temporal region of the lizard skull. Recently, he has provided the largest dataset ever assembled to assess broad-scale reptile relationships, finding the first ever agreement between morphological and molecular hypotheses on the early evolution of lizards. Further, he demonstrated that the major reptile lineages first evolved prior to the greatest mass extinction in the history of complex life— the Permian Triassic Mass extinction. Currently, Tiago is investigating the impact of the Permian Triassic Mass extinction on long-term evolutionary patterns in reptiles.
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