The Cnidarian Tree of Life Project

Graduate student, Department of Biology, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

I am a PhD student in the lab of Dr. Scott France. I am interested in mechanisms involved in life diversification in the deep sea, using taxa within the subclass Octocorallia as model systems. My research interests range from macroevolution to population genetics, and my motivations are rooted in marine conservation.

Some of the fundamental questions I am interseted in are: (1) What is the origin of octocoral taxa? Whether octocorals originated in the deep-sea and radiated in shallow water or the opposite is unknown, and this question is hard to tackle because of the lack of a fossil record. Recent phylogenetic work on the subclass may help shed light on those questions. (2) Why are there so many octocoral species in the deep-sea? What are the mechanisms promoting speciation and biodiversity in the deep-sea? (3) Understanding patterns of dispersal is central to the comprehension of biodiversity and biogeography. However, still little is known on the mechanisms underlying such patterns in the marine environment, as dispersal is hard to measure and influenced by complex stochastic processes. What are the mechanisms allowing populations of benthic, colonial, slow growing organisms to sustain themselves in a patchy environment? (4) Deep-sea fishing has been compared to forest clear-cutting. What are the dangers facing octocoral populations when confronted with destructive deep-sea trawling? It is likely that successive trawling on seamounts will push populations to a bottleneck. As we gather information on gene flow between seamount populations, it is crucial to model the effect of population constriction on genetic diversity.