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L. Lacey Knowles
Associate Professor
Associate Curator, Museum of Zoology
Ph.D., Ecology and Evolution, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1999
U-M affiliation(s)
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Museum of Zoology
Contact information
University of Michigan
2085 Museums Building
1109 Geddes Ave.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1079
Phone: (734) 763-5603, office
(734) 763-7943, lab
Fax: (734) 763-4080
Email: knowlesl@umich.edu
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Fields of study
Speciation, sexual selection, phylogeography, and evolutionary radiations
Academic background
I received my Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1999. I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona in 1999-2002.
Graduate students
Diego Alvarado Serrano, Kelsey Gibbons, Qixin He, Huateng Huang, Lucy Tran, Amanda Zellmer
Postdoctoral fellows
Dan Edwards, Tatiana Fedina, Pavel Klimov
Lab alumni
Corrine Richards, Ph.D. 2008, Postdoctoral Fellow 2008-09 University of California Berkeley, now Assistant Professor, Tulane University, cori@tulane.edu
Elen Oneal, Ph.D. 2009, now Postdoctoral Fellow, Duke University, eo22@duke.edu
Tim Connallon, Ph.D. 2009, now Postdoctoral Fellow Cornell Unviversity, tconnal@umich.edu
Bryan Carstens, Postdoctoral Fellow 2004-07, now Assistant Professor, Louisiana State University
Visiting professor
Dr. Shengquan Xu, Institute of Zoology, Life Science College, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China
News
Gene and species trees research funded
A grant on “Estimating species trees with population genetic approaches: working towards a new phylogenetic paradigm for 21st century phylogenetics” for $356,000 has been awarded by the National Science Foundation to Dr. L. Lacey Knowles. She is collaborating with Dr. Laura Kubatko, Ohio State University.
New approaches for estimating species trees represent a fundamental shift in how gene trees are used and interpreted. Knowles' research combines empirical investigation, simulation, and theory to verify that the intriguing promises from the theoretical realm can be realized in practice when the messiness of real data is taken into account in this new area of phylogenetics. The grant begins September 2009 for two years.
Knowles awarded UC Berkeley visiting professorship award
Professor L. Lacey Knowles was awarded a Visiting Miller Research Professorship Award from the University of California, Berkeley, for fall 2009. Her project is titled “Exploring biodiversity dynamics: benefits and challenges of genetic approaches.”
Genetic approaches can not only provide great insights into the processes generating patterns of diversity, but also have immediate consequences for preserving that diversity, according to Knowles. This includes biological systems that capture our imaginations and are often at the greatest risk of loss – recently originated species and evolutionary radiations. Yet, these are also the very situations where a disconnect between the way in which genetic data are interpreted and the actual underlying evolutionary processes can result in (i) a distorted picture of the history of speciation, and (ii) mis-specified targets of conservation concern. The proposed research addresses two areas in which this gap between the inferences we make with our genetic analyses and the biological realities we aim to capture may be bridged by recent advances – the identification of species boundaries and the direct estimation of species trees.
The focus of the work (i.e., population genetic approaches for estimating species boundaries and relationships) by its very nature also serves as a conduit for exchange between the traditionally separate fields of genetics and systematics. "I will be working with both empiricists and population genetics theoreticians across departments and museums, where the interdisciplinary strengths of the proposed research can be fully realized," she said.
Highly cited paper
Professor L. Lacey Knowles article “Delimiting species without monophyletic gene trees,” published in the December 2007 journal Systematic Biology, was identified as a fast breaking paper in the field of environment/ecology by Essential Science Indicators. Knowles research is featured on the Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch® Web site for December 2008.
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