Our research group is interdisciplinary and seeks to understand the mechanisms underlying evolutionary trajectories, diversification patterns and adaptive traits of extinct and extant sharks, skates, rays (the neoselachians) both at the organism and molecular levels. Modern neoselachians are the distillate of 450 million years of cartilaginous fish evolution.
However, our ongoing research is not restricted to elasmobranchs but also includes marine (and to a lesser degree freshwater) extinct and extant bony fishes. One of the main goal is to understand how new morphological and genetic traits evolve and how genetic variations maps on phylogenetic hypotheses based on phenotypic features. Fossils (and molecular clock approaches) are included to provide a historic perspective and to date cladogenetic events.
The data we use are morphological features, which are examined using different methods (SEM, MicroCT-scans, X-rays, clearing and staining) and a wide array of molecular sequences. Data are analysed using rigorous cladistic methods (parsimony, Bayesian) and total evidence approaches (Supertree, Supermatrix approaches). Improved molecular clock methods are used to infer the timing of cladogenetic events. In addition, the quality of the fossil record, zoogeographic relationships through time and space, and food-web compositions are analysed with different methods.
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