Dr. Van Syoc, Senior Collection Manager of Invertebrates at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, has been a CAS staff member since his student days at San Francisco State University in 1979.  During his academic career Bob has studied various topics in marine ecology and invertebrate zoology, from San Francisco Bay to the South Pacific.  Bob earned his Ph.D. at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography,  where he used DNA analysis to study genetic relationships and speciation among barnacles at the molecular level.  Bob’s current research focuses on symbiotic relationships of barnacles with sponges and corals. 

            Barnacles live in all of the worlds' oceans, from the depths of hydrothermal vents to the tidal pools and estuaries.  Therefore, they can be very useful for studying biogeography and ecology as well as phylogenetics.  Their hard shells remain long after the inhabitant is dead.  These shells are abundant along all continental margins and many become fossilized.  In fact, Charles Darwin recognized that “Cirripedes now abound so under every zone, all over the world, that the present period will hereafter apparently have as good a claim to be called the age of Cirripedes, as the Palaeozoic period has to be called the age of Trilobites.”  So, you can see how an evolutionary biologist might find them interesting.