Why mussels?

Coastal, intertidal bivalves are ecologically important from Paine 1966 to Angelini et al 2016 and beyond, and those mussels referenced encapsulate 300 million years or more of divergent evolutionary ecology - in the same taxonomic family. So much potential for understanding how diversity adapts to a changing environment! Here they are, in our southeastern and Gulf marshes, doing a big job for us. Similarly, Same for the immense and threatened diversity of mussels in our rivers, playing a huge role in indicating the health of those ecosystems. Shouldn't we know these bivalves better?? 

Why barnacles?

The ultimate biological 'drifters' for understanding oceanography, they have a hermaphroditic life style so everybody represents the population and how their offspring move. They interact with both local environment (as in work we have done in Balanus glandula and Chthamalus fragilis and others) and as epibionts on hosts including crabs, turtles and whales - we want to know more about their patterns of diversity across environments and hosts for a deeper understanding of interactions between ocean changes and biotic diversity.

Why fish, and trees?

Because the ways that natural history and biogeography interact with trait diversity and genomic diversity are fascinating. We have funding from diverse sources such as Paint Rock FRC and the USDA Forest Service to be sure that we focus on thinking about local, endemic diversity -- and all it does for our local and regional ecosystems. Our lab is a melting pot of discussing life history and natural history and how genomes evolve, whether pine trees, darters, mussels, or whatever the next challenge is.