CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
SUMMER
INTERNSHIP ADVISOR LIST
BOTANY | ENTOMOLOGY | INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY & GEOLOGY | HERPETOLOGY | ORNITHOLOGY & MAMMALOGY
Botany
Dr. Frank Almeda, Senior Curator, McAllister Chair
415-321-8359
Frank Almeda received his Ph.D. from Duke University in 1975 and joined the Academy's staff in 1978. His current studies center on the systematics and phylogeny of Princess Flowers (Melastomataceae), a world wide family of tropical plants related to the evening primroses and the family that includes Eucalyptus, Bottlebrush, and guavas. He is using this family as a tool to understand biodiversity hotspots in wet tropical forests in the Old and New World with special emphasis on the floras of Brazil and Madagascar. He is also working with an international team on drug discovery and biodiversity conservation in the Ranomafana region of southeastern Madagascar.
1) Systematic significance of seed morphology among neotropical and paleotropical Melastomataceae (tribe Melastomeae). Analysis of the micromorphology of seeds using scanning electron microscopy to evaluate past and current classifications of a large pantropical tribe. Seed morphology has been an important character in assessing relationships within the family but no comprehensive survey has been accomplished to date.
2) Cladistic Analysis of Melastomataceae: Character study and cladogram generation using original observations and published data on vegetative and floral morphology focusing on tribes whose composition and circumscription has been controversial such as the Merianieae, Microlicieae, and Melastomaeae.
Dr. Tom Daniel, Curator
415-321-8358
1) Revision of the flora of San Francisco. The intern will be involved in collecting and identifying plants, databasing collections, writing treatments of particular families and/or genera.
2) Systematics of Stenostephanus (Acanthaceae) in Central America. The intern's project will consist of work with herbarium specimens to write descriptions and keys to 10 - 12 species of this genus.
Peter Fritsch, Associate Curator
415-321-8356
Peter Fritsch received his Ph.D. in 1995 from the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden Program in Botany and the Claremont Graduate School. He joined the Academy's staff in 1996. His primary research focuses on the systematics, biogeography, and evolution of members of the primarily woody flowering plant order Ericales, a group that includes the snowdrops ( Styrax ), silverbells ( Halesia ), persimmons, blueberries ( Vaccinium ), and ebonies ( Diospyros ), among many others. Many of the plants in this order are disjunct relicts, which means that they were once (in the Miocene) widespread but are now restricted in range to discrete and widely separated areas of the earth due to climate change. Dr. Fritsch uses a combination of morphological and molecular approaches on these groups to understand their species diversity, evolutionary relationships, and adaptations to particular environments. The patterns of relictualism and speciation elucidated from these studies can eventually lead to a better overall understanding of the effects and significance of climate change on the world's biota.
1) Systematics of Cercis. The flowering shrub genus Cercis (redbud; legume family) is widely distributed but scattered across North America at mid-latitudes. In eastern North America, individuals of Cercis have leaves with sharp points or "drip-tips" presumed to more efficiently shunt water from the surface and thus diminish pathogen activity. In western dryer climates, the leaves of Cercis become more rounded and the drip tip eventually disappears in populations in New Mexico and western Texas and westward. Populations of Cercis in northeastern Mexico are poorly known, although extremes of leaf variation seem to parallel those of the U.S. Using GIS, we will conduct outline analysis on leaves of Cercis from a sample of herbarium specimens from Mexico and compare the pattern of change across geographic space to changes in elevation and climate across the Sierra Madre Oriental. We will ultimately interpret the results in the context of northern hemisphere biogeography and the taxonomy of Cercis.
2) Pollen morphology of Symplocos. The genus Symplocos (200 species) is disjunct to the tropics bordering the Pacific Rim. Pollen morphology has been thought to be useful for classification at the higher level in the genus, but no comprehensive sampling strategy has been used to estimate the consistency of pollen characters. We will sample Symplocos from throughout the geographical and morphological range of the group to determine the utility of pollen characters as phylogenetic characters.
Dr. Kim Steiner, Associate Curator
415-321-8357
Kim Steiner has been at the Academy since 2000. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in 1982 and spent 17 years working at the National Botanical Institute in Cape Town, South Africa. Kim is interested in the evolution and ecology of plant-pollinator interactions and plant breeding systems. His primary focus is on the evolution of a specialized pollination system involving oil-secreting flowers and oil-collecting bees. Using phylogenies derived principally from molecular data, he is studying the evolution of oil secretion in southern African Scrophulariaceae and Orchidaceae and the evolution of oil-collection in the solitary bee family, Melittidae.
1) The pollination biology of selected Eriogonum species. A comparison of the pollinators of hermaphroditic, gynodioecious and dioecious species.
2) Nectar spur variation and its significance in Nemesia (Scrophulariacae).
3) An SEM survey of oil-secreting trichomes in Hemimeris (Scrophulariaceae).
Entomology
Dr. Charles Griswold, Curator
415-321-8312
1) Contribute to the NSF-funded ÒAssembling the Tree of Life Ð SpidersÓ, a multi-year project involving scientists from the USA, Argentina, Spain, and Denmark aimed at a phylogeny for all 110 spider families using data from fossils, DNA, comparative morphology, and behavior. The student will collect spiders, study silk spinning and predatory behavior, examine internal and external morphology, use light microscopes, SEM, and the automontage digital imaging system. These data will augment the ÒTree of LifeÓ data set. The SSI student will derive an evolutionary tree for spiders and discuss its implications.
2) Comparative ontogeny of the respiratory and spinning organs of two agelenoid spiders. The families Amphinectidae and Desidae are sister groups, yet have radically different tracheal systems. Representatives (Badumna longinqua, Desidae, and Metaltella simoni, Amphinectidae) will be fixed and ontogeny of the tracheae studied, with particular attention to the independently derived complex system of desids. In addition, the cribellate spinning organ ontogeny will be documented and compared to that known for the primitive spider Phyxelida tanganensis (Phyxelididae).
3) African Orsolobidae. The austral spider family Orsolobidae comprises two genera from Africa (Griswold and Platnick 1987) and several others from South America, New Zealand, and Australia. At least three new species are known from South Africa. The intern will study the phylogeny of these new orsolobids, providing data pertinent to Afromontane biogeography.
4) Contribute to the NSF-funded ÒPBI: Collaborative Research: The Megadiverse, Microdistributed Spider Family OonopidaeÓ, a multi-year project involving scientists from all over the world to provide a complete taxonomy of this family. The student will learn and use techniques as in 1, above. Data will be added to the growing ÒPBIÓ data set to derive a provisional evolutionary tree for oonopid spiders and discuss its implications.
Dr. David Kavanaugh, Senior Curator
415-321-8315
Biodiversity inventory of the predaceous ground beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) fauna of the Gaoligong Mountains of western Yunnan Province, China. Selected intern will assist with (1) the identification of species based on study of the existing literature, (2) description of newly discovered species, (3) development of an identification key for a selected group, and (4) development of a manuscript for publication of results.
Dr. Jeremy Miller, Postdoctoral Fellow
415-321-8238
Jeremy Miller received his Ph.D. at the George Washington University in Washington D.C. Much of his Ph.D. training took place at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. After completing his Ph.D., he continued to work at the Smithsonian before taking a position at the California Academy of Sciences. His interests include the evolution and diversity of black widow spiders, the evolution of complicity in sexual cannibalism, spiders adapted to cave environments, estimating spider diversity in tropical forests, and other questions in spider evolution. More information may be found at:
http://www.calacademy.org/research/entomology/personnel/jmiller/index.htm
The SSI intern will sequence DNA from black widow spiders from around the world. A medically important group with a worldwide distribution, widow spiders are widely feared but poorly known. Some species are associated with human-altered habitats. Widows have diverse sexual biology involving cannibalism, mating plugs, post-copulatory sterility, and varying degrees of sexual size dimorphism. In spite of this, they remain taxonomically problematic. The intern will generate sequence data, align the sequences, and present a hypothesis of black widow spider evolution, adding to a growing body of information on black widow evolution toward a robust hypothesis of relationships among species, an assessment of the geographic limits of the various species, and an estimate of black widow species numbers worldwide.
Herpetology
Dr. Robert Drewes, Curator
415-321-8277
Information about Dr. Drewes' research and academic interests can be found at www.calacademy.org/research/curators/drewes.htm
The phylogenetic status of the arboreal African treefrog genus Phlyctimantis is problematic. In the phylogenetic revision of the African treefrog family Hyperoliidae (Drewes, 1984), Phlyctimantis clades as a primitive sister group of the largely terrestrial genus Kassina, but the node was uncorroborated; i.e., there is no synapomorphy defining Phlyctimantis. Similarity of the distinctive male advertisement call of species in both genera along with various other character states has suggested that Phlyctimantis is at least very close to and possibly even congeneric with Kassina.
However, recent discovery of a complex morphological character state in Phlyctimantis, absent in Kassina (except one species) may represent a synapomorphy partially corroborating the generic status of the former. I have secured a series of tissues from multiple species of both genera, and my intern will attempt to assess the level of genetic distance between these taxa using molecular techniques in our lab. The intern will also seek additional morphological information to add to the study.
Invertebrate Zoology & Geology
Dr. Terrence M. Gosliner, Senior Curator
415-321-8171
1) Systematics of the Indo-Pacific species of the nudibranch genus Cuthona. This large genus of nudibranchs has been poorly studied in tropical waters. Recent collections from several localities have yielded more than 25 undescribed species, and the project will focus on describing new taxa and developing a preliminary phylogeny for this group.
2) Systematics and phylogeny of the dendronotine nudibranch genus Doto. This genus contains many described species from temperate and tropical waters. Discovery of several undescribed species has prompted systematic and phylogenetic study of this clade and vicariance biogeographic analysis.
3) Systematics and phylogeny of the Indo-Pacific Tritoniidae. Members of this family are predators on soft corals and gorgonians and are especially abundant in tropical waters. Tritoniids are poorly known and many undescribed species are present in the Academy's collection. This project begins examination of this diverse and biologically important taxon.
4) Descriptions of three new species of Janolus (Nudibranchia: Zephyriinidae) from the Indo-Pacific. This project examines the anatomy and systematics of three new species and places the taxon in a modern phylogenetic context.
5) Descriptions of five new species of Aglajidae (Opisthobranchia: Cephalaspidea). This project will involve description and anatomical studies of Indo-Pacific aglajids including species description and construction of preliminary phylogenies.
Dr. Rich Mooi, Curator and Curriculum Coordinator, SSI
415-321-8270
Rich Mooi received his Master's and Doctoral degrees from the University of Toronto, Canada, and has been with the Academy for nearly 14 years. He studies the systematics, phylogeny, paleontology, and biogeography of echinoderms, particularly sea urchins and sand dollars. His field work has included submersible dives off the Bahamas, paleontology in Alaska, and ship-based collecting in Antarctica. He is also working on a theory that describes the homologies and evolutionary relationships among major clades throughout the phylum Echinodermata. More information about Dr. Mooi's research and academic interests can be found at http://www.calacademy.org/research/curators/mooi.htm
http://www.calacademy.org/research/izg/echinodermswebpage.htm
1) Origin and evolution of the northeastern Pacific sand dollar fauna (Clypeasteroida: Echinoidea). An examination of both Recent and fossil genera to develop cladistic and morphometric analyses that will examine the origins of this fauna.
2) The phylogenetics of miniaturization: a species level analysis of Echinocyamus (Clypeasteroida: Echinoidea). Echinocyamus is a genus of 25+ extant species of greatly miniaturized laganines once considered plesiomorphic for the entire Clypeasteroida. The student will develop a phylogeny of all the extant species in the genus to explore the origins of reduction so prevalent in the group.
3) Phylogenetics of the clypeasterine sand dollars. Although there are over 40 nominal species in the genus Clypeaster, morphometrics will be necessary to determine validity of these with the hope of using specimens to develop characters for a phylogenetic analysis.
Dr. Peter D. Roopnarine, Associate Curator
415-321-8271
1) Phylogenetic history of the bivalve family Veneridae. The venerids are one of the most diverse and morphologically complex groups of bivalve molluscs. Their adaptive explosion began in the Cretaceous and has continued to the Recent. The intern will use combined paleontological, morphometric, and developmental data to reconstruct the evolutionary history of this important group. These data are integrated with paleoecological information to reconstruct the family's adaptive radiation.
2) Turnover of marine organisms in tropical America during the Pliocene. In collaboration with Dr. Carol Tang, the intern and I will examine the Neogene bivalve fauna of the Dominican Republic from both ecological and systematic perspectives. We hope to establish whether ecology and/or phylogeny played roles in the disappearance and survival of various taxa.
3) Hydrobiids of the Cuatro Cienegas thermal spring system of Coahuila Mexico. These springs harbor an impressive hydrobiid gastropod fauna. This closed and environmentally unusual system is ideal for studies of evolutionary and morphological diversification. Dr. Carol Tang, the intern, and I would study patterns of morphological evolution and the environmental controls of morphological diversity within several of these hydrobiid genera.
Dr. Robert Van Syoc, Senior Collections Manager
415-321-8259
1) Systematics of sponge-inhabiting barnacles. Studies of the taxonomy and phylogenetics of the barnacle genera Acasta and Membranobalanus, obligate symbionts of sponges.
2) Corals and their barnacle symbionts (with Gary Williams). Studies of the taxonomy, phylogenetics, and host specificity of barnacle symbionts of corals.
3) Population and species level biogeography of eastern tropical Pacific barnacles. Examination of biogeographic patterns in the ETP using DNA sequences to generate gene trees and measures of genetic divergence.
Dr. Gary Williams, Curator and Chair
415-321-8272
Information on research, academic interests, and background:
http://www.calacademy.org/research/izg/williams.htm
Octocoral Research Center Website:
http://www.calacademy.org/research/izg/orc_home.html
Coral Reefs Website:
http://www.calacademy.org/research/izg/CoralReefOrganisms/CoralReefs/CoralReefIndex.htm
Gary Williams received his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Cape Town and has been with the Academy since 1990. He is an invertebrate zoologist and studies the systematics, biogeography and evolutionary biology of octocorals (soft corals, sea fans and sea pens) from a variety of marine realms - such as coral reefs and the deep sea. His recent field study locations include: Madagascar, the Gulf of Guinea, Palmyra Atoll, Philippines, Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, Palau, and Papua New Guinea. He has also recently studied the systematics of deep sea material that was trawled or dredged during survey cruises in Alaska and Antarctic seas.
1) Systematics of barnacle/sea fan interactions (with Dr. Robert Van Syoc).
2) Evolutionary biology of octocorals (soft corals, sea fans, and sea pens).
Ornithology & Mammalogy
Dr. Jack Dumbacher, Assistant Curator
415-321-8351
Information about Dr. Dumbacher's research and academic interests can be found at http://www.calacademy.org/research/bmammals/jdumbacher.html
1) Phylogeography of lowland New Guinea - Although the lowlands of New Guinea include large basins and continuous forest tracts, animals living there show tremendous geographical variation. We are studying the underlying genetic variation of six widespread and common lowland bird species to study the historical and population genetic origins of this variation.
2) Phylogeny of the Cassowaries (Casuariidae) - 42 species or subspecies have been described, based upon color and morphological differences. The only thing commonly agreed upon is that there are three major groupings, and each is currently recognized as a species. We have multiple samples from each species, representing most of the major geographical regions. Furthermore, we have permission to sample many of the type specimens currently housed in Sir Walter Rothschild's collections in Tring, England. We will use "ancient DNA" techniques to extract and amplify this DNA, and construct a molecular phylogeny for the Cassowaries.