University Events

Description: The Embryos and Evolution lab mostly focuses on comparing developmental anatomy (morphogenesis). Our study species span reef fishes, sea turtles, humpback whales, and a variety of birds and mammals all to address questions about early life stages, ecology and evolution. We often focus on skeletal morphology because it can be easily tracked during development, across taxa, and in deep-time fossils. In addition to applied contributions to wildlife conservation and reproductive health, the Kavanagh labs research addresses fundamental questions about mechanisms of embryo variation, innovation in nature, and how systems become stabilized or labile in evolution. Our methods include experimental manipulations of development, comparative anatomy, histology, gene expression, field studies, and computational modeling methods. In this talk I will give an overview of the lab and show recent results on reef fish evolution and sea turtle genetics.