Andrew is a post-doctoral researcher in North Carolina focused on population and conservation genetics in hydrothermal vent communities.
David is a graduate student in Florida. He studies the ecology and conservation of sharks.
Amy is a graduate student in North Carolina studying local ecological knowledge within small scale fisheries.
Chuck is a graduate student in North Carolina focusing on apex predators and how they interact with fisheries.
Lyndell is a graduate student in North Carolina, studying the feeding ecology of cownose rays.
Iris is a graduate student in Washington studying habitat use and feeding habits of juvenile Pacific salmon and herring in Puget Sound.
Michael is a graduate student in Maryland investigating the visual systems of mantis shrimp.
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By Andrew David Thaler, on May 13th, 2011
 A diagrammatic tree depicting the organisation of most eukaryotes into six major groups. The relationships amongst most of the major groups and the position of the ‘root’ of the tree are shown as unresolved (note however, the grouping of Opisthokonta and Amoebozoa). The arrow shows a possible precise placement of the root, based on gene fusion data. (Simpson and Roger 2004)  Depending on your view of phylogenetics, a recent publication in Nature reporting the discovery of a new kingdom-level branch on the tree of life, basal to Kingdom Fungi, is either a major revision of our current view of taxonomy or completely unsurprising and expected. While we mostly refer to the four kingdoms within Domain Eukarya as Protista, Plantae, Fungi, and Animalia, it’s understood by the scientific community that Protista is essentially a catch-all category, not a true clade, for eukaryotes that don’t quite fit into the other three groups. While this is convenient for organization, it fails to adequately express the diversity of protists. Four kingdoms is a useful system, but there’s no reason why diversity at the kingdom level couldn’t be much higher. A strict cladist could create hundreds, if not thousands of kingdoms from Protista alone.
Continue reading The moldy kingdom gets a new neighbor
By Andrew David Thaler, on October 20th, 2010
 Image from http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/labs/biomaterials/slime.html Today is Hagfish Day! Who knew?
What is a hagfish?
Hagfish are primitive eel-like chordates make famous for their relative unattractiveness*, profuse production of slime, and charismatic ability to tie themselves in knots. They are perhaps the only ‘fish’ that possesses a skull, but no vertebral column. But the question “What is a hagfish?” goes much deeper than that and it’s answer is fundamental to the evolution of vertebrates and, ultimately, us.
Continue reading Grampa Hagfish: say hello to your greatest uncle
By Andrew David Thaler, on September 16th, 2010
Objective 1: Develop the least publicly accessible title for a blog post about seadragons, mate selection, and evolution
Objective 1 Status: complete
Objective 2: Draw in whatever readers push passed the unwieldy title with an unconventional narrative structure.
Objective 2 Status: complete
Objective 3: Hook the reader with a fascinating, though brief, background on seahorses, seadragons, and pipefish.
Continue reading Non-Monophyly within Syngnathidae
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