Faculty Support: Nikki Hughes

My primary research focuses on the evolution and biogeography of invertebrate animals. In the lab we use genomic, transcriptomic, and morphological data from living and extinct animals to better understand invertebrate evolution. A large body of our work focuses on arthropods and on mollusks, but we also investigate many other groups of invertebrates, including velvet onychophorans, nemerteans, platyhelminths, annelids, and the so-called “minor phyla”. Current NSF-funded projects include Collaborative Research: The Opiliones of New Zealand: Revisionary synthesis and application of species delimitation for testing biogeographic hypotheses

Recent Publications

Benavides, , L. R., Cosgrove, J. G., Harvey, M. S., and Giribet, G. (2019). Phylogenomic interrogation resolves the backbone of the Pseudoscorpiones Tree of Life. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 139, 106509. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2019.05.023

Benavides, L. R., Hormiga, G., and Giribet, G. (2019). Phylogeny, evolution and systematic revision of the mite harvestman family Neogoveidae (Opiliones Cyphophthalmi). Invertebrate Systematics 33, 101-180. doi:10.1071/is18018

Cunha, T. J., and Giribet, G. (2019). A congruent topology for deep gastropod relationships. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 286, 20182776. doi:10.1098/rspb.2018.2776

Derkarabetian, S., Benavides, L. R., and Giribet, G. (2019). Sequence capture phylogenomics of historical ethanol-preserved museum specimens: unlocking the rest of the vault. Molecular Ecology Resources. doi:10.1111/1755-0998.13072

Giribet, G., and Baker, C. M. (2019). Further discussion on the Eocene drowning of New Caledonia: discordances from the point of view of zoology. Journal of Biogeography 46, 1912-1918. doi:10.1111/jbi.13635

Giribet, G., and Edgecombe, G. D. (2019). The phylogeny and evolutionary history of arthropods. Current Biology 29, R592-R602. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2019.04.057

Laumer, C. E., Fernández, R., Lemer, S., Combosch, D. J., Kocot, K., Andrade, S. C. S., Sterrer, W., Sørensen, M. V., and Giribet, G. (2019). Revisiting metazoan phylogeny with genomic sampling of all phyla. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 286, 20190831. doi:10.1098/rspb.2019.0831

Laumer, S., Bieler, R., and Giribet, G. (2019). Resolving the relationships of clams and cockles: dense transcriptome sampling drastically improves the bivalve tree of life. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 286, 20182684. doi:10.1098/rspb.2018.2684

Giribet, G., and Edgecombe, G. D. (2020). 'The Invertebrate Tree of Life.' (Princeton University Press: Princeton and Oxford.)

Courses Taught

OEB 91R Supervised Reading
OEB 99R Supervised Research
OEB 11 Introduction to Tropical Biology
OEB 51 Biology and Evolution of Invertebrate Animals
OEB 141 Biogeography
OEB 181 Systematics
OEB 310 Metazoan Systematics