DAVID R. LINDBERG, Professor
Evolutionary Biology and Ecology
Ph.D., University of California, Santa Cruz, 1983
I believe that phylogenetics is at the core of Integrative Biology, and that the history, interactions, and relationships of the taxa that I study are the threads that unite the various temporal and spatial scales of my research.
My lab employs a wide variety of approaches, including paleontological, geological, and biogeographical data, along with comparative morphology, developmental biology, long-term experimental manipulations, and phylogenetic studies.
Molecular techniques have been recently added to our repertoire.
My systematic work features the Patellogastropoda, a group of gastropod molluscs that figure prominently in ecological studies of rocky intertidal communities around the world.
My systematic research efforts are to construct and use phylogenetic hypotheses to understand adaptation and evolution in patellacean faunas in different regions of the world through time.
I also continue to investigate the relationships amongst higher molluscan taxa including subclades within the Gastropoda, the "conchiferian" groups, and the phyletic position of the Mollusca. Data sets include morphological characters, molecular characters and fossil and Recent taxa, providing a total evidence approach.
My work on the evolution of the rocky intertidal settings is downsizing, but I remain interested in the role of substrate in determining and augmenting community composition and subsequent species interactions.
My newest research project seeks to determine the role of heterochrony in the evolution of life history strategies and reproductive systems in molluscs. In contrast to my earlier studies of marine gastropods, this work uses land snails as the model system. This study combines requisite ancestor-descendant relationships with developmental patterns in the reproductive system to identify modifications in developmental pathways that produce the complex reproductive tracts seen in pulmonate snails.
Graduate students typically choose their research topics. Often these topics are outside my own specific research areas, but share a phylogenetic framework, include fossil as well as living organisms as study taxa, and are situated in the nearshore marine environment.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
I strongly encourage prospective graduate
students to contact current and former students to learn
more about life in our lab, my expectations and idiosyncrasies.
Current Students:
- Paul Bunje - [bunje@socrates.berkeley.edu]
- Alicia Cordero - [acordero@u
clink4.berkeley.edu]
- Jim Kurpius - [jkurpius@ucli
nk4.Berkeley.Edu]
- Kirsten Lindstrom - [kirsten
l@uclink4.berkeley.edu]
Former Students:
Douglas Long - Doug completed his Ph.D on the
historical biogeography of the
northeastern Pacific shark fauna.
He found that the latitudinal distribution patterns of living sharks are bound by areas of current change and/or thermal transition, and shark ranges fall into biogeographic provinces similar to patterns seen in other species of marine organisms from the same region.
The fossil record of sharks from the northeastern Pacific Ocean extends from the Late Cretaceous to the late Pleistocene, but most of the deposits are Neogene in age, and are located in California. Doug found that the assembly of the Recent fauna begins in the Eocene and the evolutionary trend for the fauna is a gradual compilation of extant forms, and extinction or extirpation of older forms. The fauna of today is a combination of archaic and more recent taxa, but is predominantly Neogene in origin.
Michael Russell [russell@ucis.Vill.Edu] - Michael's Ph.D. research combined data
from the fossil record and the Recent, and addressed
evolutionary and ecological problems from a paleobiological
perspective. At the specimen level, he showed the effects of
taphonomic bias in the preservation of embryonic bivalves in
the genus Transennella and related the results to hypotheses
of its life history evolution. At the species level he show
that both taphonomic bias and sampling error result in an
autocorrelation between species' geographic range and
geologic duration, and at the assemblage level he contrasted
modern death assemblages to Pleistocene marine terrace
assemblages and estimate the degree of taphonomic bias in
the preservation of these faunas.
Robyn Stuber [Stuber.Robyn@epamail.epa.gov] - Robyn completed her MA on the evolution of keyhole
limpets (Fissurella) along the margin of the eastern Pacific
Ocean. Robyn developed a set of techniques for acquiring
contours of limpet shells via video imaging, and independent
of the morphometric data, conducted a phylogenetic analysis
of the group using anatomical and shell character data and
then mapped the morphometric data onto the cladogram. This
work is what I consider to be an excellent example of a
study of "evolutionary morphology."
Ken Warheit [warheit@u.washington.edu] - Ken's Ph.D.
dissertation research tested the hypothesis that many
features of the wing and shoulder in Recent Sulidae are
adaptations to locomotory behaviors. Ken defined adaptation
in the context of a phylogeny and established a phylogenetic
hypothesis for the relationships within the Sulidae before
testing the hypothesis of adaptation. He concluded that the
shape of the gannet wing reflects both phylogeny and
adaptive evolution, and that integrating data from
paleontological and neontological sources is a viable
research strategy when addressing problems in evolutionary
ecology.
