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Matthew Chatfield
Ph.D. student
B.A., Department of Biology, The University of Chicago, 1998
U-M affiliation(s)
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Museum of Zoology
Contact information
University of Michigan
3091 Museums Building
1109 Geddes Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1079
Phone: (734) 647-2207
Email: mattchat@umich.edu
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Fields of study
Speciation and herpetology
Research interests
The broader questions of my research involve the maintenance of species boundaries and hybrid zone dynamics. Hybrid zones have long been seen as “windows on the evolutionary process,” and are excellent systems in which to address the genetics of species boundaries. Salamanders of the family Plethodontidae are the most diverse and speciose of any salamander group in the world, comprising about two-thirds of all described species. The Southern Appalachians is one of two centers of diversity for this remarkable clade and contains numerous instances of incipiently diverging lineages. This makes the region well suited for studies of evolution, and especially of species boundaries. My study system is a series of hybrid zones among three species of plethodontids – Plethodon jordani, P. metcalfi and P. teyahalee – in the Great Smoky and Balsam Mountain Ranges of North Carolina. My immediate research questions incorporate both molecular and morphological markers, and are focused on the introgression of presumably positively selected traits.
Academic background
B.A., Department of Biology, The University of Chicago, 1998.
Advisors
Priscilla Tucker, Ronald Nussbaum
Tucker Lab
News
Chatfield lands Tulane postdoc
Dr. Matt Chatfield begins his postdoc this summer in the lab of Dr. Cori Richards, an EEB alumnus, in the EEB department at Tulane University, New Orleans. He’ll be looking at the role of sexual selection in driving speciation in poison dart frogs in Panama and/or examining the susceptibility of southeastern frogs to the pathogenic chytrid fungus, which is responsible for mass die-offs in many amphibian species.
Indiana Dunes BioBlitz
Matt Chatfield was one of about 150 scientists who volunteered their expertise as team leaders to conduct surveys of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore for BioBlitz 2009. The 24-hour marathon’s goal was to compile species lists for the park for all groups of organisms. Chatfield’s target organisms were reptiles and amphibians.
 He led three separate groups on surveys in three different regions of the park. The first group was an educational hike where he took a group of seven high school students on a walk through prairie/dune habitat and talked about reptiles, amphibians and how herpetologists study them. He led two groups of volunteers from the general public to survey for the local herpetofauna using aquatic funnel traps, dipnets and visual and acousitc surveys. This was the third BioBlitz conducted jointly by the National Park Service and the National Geographic Society.
BioBlitz was founded to help communities learn about the biological diversity of local parks and to better understand how to protect them.
Chatfield named Honors Fellow
Matt Chatfield, EEB Ph.D. student, has been named an Honors Fellow by the LSA Honors Program. He will host a seminar on amphibian declines for undergraduate honors students in January featuring Dr. Elizabeth Jokusch of the University of Connecticut. He also plans an informal discussion about selected readings on the topic and a field trip to a local amphibian breeding site.
“What I hope most to accomplish is to instill an understanding of the problem and the magnitude of the amphibian extinction crisis,” said Chatfield.
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