When a land-dwelling animal evolves to live underwater, what happens to the morphology and material properties of its bones and cartilage?
I approach this problem using a combination of medical imaging, materials testing, and computer modeling
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Morphology
How do the skulls of aquatic and terrestrial salamanders differ, and do all aquatic salamanders converge on the same morphology?
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Material Properties
Do the tissues of aquatic and terrestrial salamanders have different properties?
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Biomechanical Testing
How do differently-shaped skulls respond to simulated stress events like burrowing and biting?
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Modern salamanders show not only a diversity of feeding strategies (hunting on land, or in water, or arboreally with projectile tongues), but also a certain flexibility throughout life. Among Caudata are groups that begin life in the water and remain there through sexual maturity, while others metamorphose and live their adult lives on land. Some groups have direct-development and never need to feed aquatically. This makes them an ideal group to study the mechanisms of feeding and how they are reflected in cranial morphology, in an effort to tease apart ecological and phylogenetic influences on skull shapes.
My dissertation research has focused on lineages with secondarily aquatic species, particularly the lungless salamander genus Eurycea and the many paedomorphic Ambystoma. I am interested in how the skull shape differs in different lineages and the biomechanical consequences of those shape differences, as well as asking questions about the skull's material properties. |
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