Marine Invertebrate Molecular Lab

Understanding the forces that drive speciation in marine environments is challenging. High dispersal potential of organisms with planktonic larvae and lack of clear geographic barriers to gene flow, greatly complicate our ability to reconstruct the chain of events leading to the formation of new species.

We employ a multi-disciplinary approach, integrating novel genomic tools with state-of-the-art comparative morphology to answer questions pertaining the ecology, biogeography, phylogeny and evolution of benthic marine taxa.

We utilize genetic tools to answer questions pertaining the presence of cryptic alien species, assert phylogenetic and biogeographic relationships, and model species distributions based on genetic information.