Postdoc News

A school of Danio in the respirometer_Yangfan Zhang

Unlocking the energetic secrets of collective animal movement: How group behavior reduces energy costs in fish

February 20, 2024

Many animals, including apex predators, move in groups. We know this collective behavior is fundamental to the animal’s ability to move in complex environments, but less is known about what drives the behavior because many factors underlie its evolution. Scientists wonder, though, if all these animals share a fundamental drive such as for mating, safety, or perhaps even to save energy.

“The keyword is perhaps,” said lead author Yangfan Zhang, postdoctoral researcher, “because no one has actually measured this and compared it directly across all animal groups, mainly...

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Enrollment in arthropods

Unveiling ancient secrets: 3D preservation of trilobite soft tissues sheds light on convergent evolution of defensive enrollment

December 20, 2023

They’d been in the collections of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) since the 1870s when they were first discovered. Nestled in among the largest collection of trilobites, the unique fossils rested in drawers until 145 years later when  Sarah Losso, PhD candidate in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (OEB) at Harvard, began combing through the collection of trilobites as part of her dissertation.

“I started my PhD going through all of these thin sections of...

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A fossil from the Fezouata Shale of Morocco shows a straight-shelled nautiloid that died, fell to the seafloor, and was colonized by dozens of tiny pterobranchs_by Javier Ortega-Hernández

480-Million-year-old fossil reveals ancient seafloor communities

October 11, 2023

In a study published in Nature, researchers, led by postdoctoral researcher Karma Nanglu, describe a 480-million-year-old cephalod from Morocco that shows the earliest example of ocean bottom dwellers making their home in dead bodies.

Dead bodies in the ocean drift to the bottom where they become home to bottom dwellers, the practice dates back to 530 million years ago. During the Paleozoic era, however, it became much harder to track the interspecies interactions. Nanglu and co-authors,...

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Franky’s narrow-mouthed frog (Mysticellus franki), described by Garg & Biju in 2019, is a Critically Endangered species_Credit S.D. Biju

Saving the frogs from existential threats

October 4, 2023

Amphibians, the first vertebrates to inhabit land 360 million years ago, are facing existential threats due to climate change, habitat destruction, and disease.

Postdoctoral researcher Sonali Garg and associate Sathyabhama Das Biju co-authored a new study published in Nature that assesses the global status of amphibians. Garg and Biju are experts in frog biology and have documented more than 100 new frog species across India, Sri Lanka, and other parts of the subcontinent. Garg,...

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Artistic reconstruction of Megasiphon thylakos by Franz Anthony

Discovery of 500-million-year-old fossil reveals astonishing secrets of tunicate origins

July 6, 2023

Karma Nanglu says his favorite animal is whichever one he’s working on. But his latest subject may hold first place status for a while: a 500-million-year-old fossil from the wonderfully weird group of marine invertebrates, the tunicates.

“This animal is as exciting a discovery as some of the stuff I found when hanging off a cliffside of a mountain, or jumping out of a helicopter. It’s just as cool,” said Nanglu, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.

In a new study in ...

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Michael Bradshaw awarded NSF  Grant

Michael Bradshaw awarded NSF Grant

July 1, 2023
Congratulations to postdoctoral fellow Michael Bradshaw (D Pfister) awarded the National Science Foundation Division of Environmental Biology Grant as Co-PI for a joint project with Professor Don Pfister titled, “A North American monograph of the powdery mildews (Erysiphaceae).”