Biochemistry Department, University of Otago
Invertebrate Diversity, Evolution and Adaptation Lab
Kia ora! Welcome to our website.
Our lab works on a range of questions at the intersection of comparative genomics, phylogenetics and evolutionary developmental biology. We do this in a range of invertebrate species, and use both “wet lab” and computational tools to investigate how the contents of animal genomes have influenced their evolutionary paths. We are particularly interested in the response of organisms to external stresses, and how the likely impacts of climate change will affect them in the near future.
We are supported in this work by several funding bodies, including the Royal Society of New Zealand (a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship, and a FastStart Marsden), the MBIE Endeavour platform, Genomics Aotearoa, and the University of Otago.
Lab News
Hannah has published an excellent write up about harmful algae and her work in the ODT - check it out here
A big welcome to Nicolás Zuñiga who is visiting us from the Aguilera lab at UDEC, Chile! We are looking forward to showing you round!
Over the last few weeks we have hosted Professor Sally Leys from the University of Alberta, and have dug into spicules, talked sponges, and done some fieldwork! Our thanks to the Chaffer Fellowship scheme from the Division of Health Sciences for supporting her travel
We had a blast at the Otago Museum for the world's first ever Sponge Day on the 10th of March! It was great to share the joys of sponges with lots of enthusiastic future biologists. See the write up here
Many thanks to the GSA and AgResearch for their support of Mary's investigations of kuku resilience to climate change with a GSA Student Research Grant for 2023-24!
Ella has been awarded a scholarship by DOC for her Masters work on freshwater sponges. Details here
Huge congrats to Mary Hawkes for winning a prize at the 2023 NZ Mol Ecol meeting! (and the WilderLab eDNA raffle while you were at it!)
Katerina has written a thought-provoking article for the ODT - available here
Massive congratulations to Daisy Power, who was awarded the Ann Wylie prize for the best performance in 4th year Genetics. Ka rawe! Your work and thesis this year were hugely impressive!
A huge high 5 to Aleisha Chalmers for the GH Satchell Prize for her work in Zoology this year - amazing stuff!
The lab has been part of a number of successful bids in the 2023 Endeavour round, in collaboration with amazing people at Lincoln Agritech and the Cawthron Institute. Please watch this space for further news.
Mary was awarded a prize in the BMS Postgraduate Symposium for her poster on kuku single cell sequencing!
We have just been awarded a Catalyst Seeding grant to forge a collaboration with researchers in Japan, Australia and the UK on sea star colouration and its link to resilience
Hannah's first paper has just come out in Harmful Algae Link
Caleb has joined the lab on a University of Otago PhD scholarship, examining the genetics and protein biochemistry of sea star colours
Daisy Power was awarded a Mike Murphy and Rob Smith Postgraduate Scholarship in Biochemistry towards her 400 level work!
Katerina has been on the Polaris 2, gathering all kinds of critters for molecular and morphological study (and getting a little sea sick) (Photo, Oscar Thomas)
Congratulations to Mary for being awarded a Brenda Shore Award for Women by the FGW to support your work with the Cawthron!
We had a blast attending the Science Wānanga held at the Araiteuru Marae here in Dunedin at the start of March - it was great to have a chance to introduce the wonderful world of biochemistry
We helped out with the Genomics Aotearoa "All the small things" evening - showing off nanopore sequencing and making DNA daquiris! (Photo: Allison Miller)
We have run some fun activities at the Otago Museum, most recently as part of the Genomics Aotearoa summer exhibition ODT links here and here
Many thanks to Graduate Women Otago for supporting Ella Dewar with a summer studentship award to study freshwater sponges across the motu
Congratulations to Hannah, for winning a prize for her poster at the Applied Genomics satellite meeting, QMB!