I’m an ichthyologist by training and have further specialized in studying macroevolutionary dynamics, leveraging phylogenetics and comparative genomics to explore the evolutionary history of fishes. With over 500 million years of vertebrate evolution, fishes inhabit every aquatic niche from polar seas to hypersaline deserts, displaying unmatched diversity in body plans, genome sizes, and physiological strategies. This makes them an exceptional system for testing universal evolutionary principles. Broadly, my research program integrates fossils and living species to investigate the morphological evolution, diversification dynamics, genomic architecture and ecological drivers of fish evolutionary innovations. These include genome reduction (e.g., pufferfishes, ocean sunfishes, and allies), skeletal novelties (e.g., snout elongation in deep-sea spikefishes or beaks in pufferfishes), independent origins of endothermy in marine fishes (e.g., tunas, opah, swordfishes), and repeated losses and gains of complex traits (e.g., eyes and pigmentation). I combine large-scale comparative genomics (e.g., whole-genome sequencing and transcriptomics) with fossil-calibrated phylogenies to reveal the genomic, an ecological underpinning of these evolutionary leaps. Equally vital to my work is documenting fish biodiversity. Through scientific expeditions, from scuba diving sampling to deep-sea exploration, and stewardship of the SIO Marine Vertebrate Collection, I expand our knowledge of under-sample regions, particularly the mesopelagic and bathypelagic zones.
Cruises:
