Dissertation Defense – Zach Hancock

Zach Hancock (EEB student, Wicksten Lab) will be defending his dissertation proposal next Friday and everyone is invited to attend the public portion of the defense (flyer attached).  His public presentation is Dec 14 at 1:00 pm in WFES 411.

His talk title is On the Origin of Haustoriid Species: Phylogenetics and speciation of sand-burrowing amphipods

Summary: Understanding the formation of new species is of critical importance to taxonomy, which has been aided in recent decades by the widespread incorporation of molecular techniques. This is particularly true when morphological divergence is limited (i.e., a cryptic species complex). Species delimitation, population genomics, and phylogenomics can help to resolve the mode of speciation in recently diverged taxa in concert with coalescent simulation modeling. This study aims at deciphering the origin of beach-burrowing crustaceans (Amphipoda: Haustoriidae), and will use each of these approaches in a step-wise manner to first generate a phylogeographic hypothesis, delimit potential cryptic lineages, test for introgression and hybridization, and finally examine trait evolution at the family level.