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Recent News in Evolutionary Biology at SDSU
Apr. 2008:
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The SDSU Herbarium (LS 267, Life Science South) joins the Consortium of California Herbaria on 21 April 2008 (John Muir's birthday). Our herbarium has over 18,000 specimens of plants, all of which are databased, and 89% of which are from California. The California records will now be accessible through The Jepson Interchange, organized through UC-Berkeley. The Interchange allows searches of records by scientific name, herbarium, county, locality, collector, date of collection, and accession number. All records are displayed, and those that are geo-referenced may be mapped in several different formats. The Interchange has become an invaluable resource for plant systematists and ecologists.
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Mar. 2008:
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Megan McKenna, now at Scripps Institute of Oceanography and a former M.S. student of Dr. Annalisa Berta and Dr. Ted Canford, was a co-author of a research article that made the cover of The Anatomical Record: Cranford, T. W., M. F. McKenna, M. S. Soldevilla, S. M. Wiggins, J. A. Goldbogen, R. E. Shadwick, P. Krysl, J. A. St. Ledger, and J. A. Hildebrand. 2008. Anatomic geometry of sound transmission and reception in Cuvier’s beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris). The Anatomical Record 291:353–378.
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Feb. 2008:
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Dr. Rulon Clark is senior author of a recent paper in Molecular Ecology - Integrating individual behaviour and landscape genetics: the population structure of timber rattlesnake hibernacula (Feb. 2008, vol. 17:719-730), which was highlighted in a Perspective of that issue.
Dr. Michael Novacek will be awarded the SDSU Alumni Association's Alumni of Distinction Award (the "Monty" award) for 2008! He will receive the award on 29 March 2008 at the annual Alumni Association banquet.
Dr. Novacek received his M.S. degree in Biology at SDSU in 1974, his thesis entitled "Insectivora of the later Eocene (Uintan) of San Diego County, California". He subsequently received his PhD from
U. C. Berkeley, and was an assistant and associate professor in Biology at SDSU from 1976-1982. Shortly after his SDSU career, he obtained a position at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where he has been Vice President and Provost for science since 1994.
Dr. Novacek is known both for scholarly works and popular books in paleontology, and has had numerous media appearances, including a PBS Nova series special.
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Dec. 2007:
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Dr. Elizabeth Waters and Tanya Renner (an SDSU undergraduate who studied under Dr. Waters) are two of the co-authors of a paper appearing in the journal Science, "The Physcomitrella Genome Reveals Evolutionary Insights into the Conquest of Land by Plants". This is the first, complete genome obtained for a bryophyte and will aid in our understanding of the transition from "algae" to land plants. See Science Express Abstract.
Josh Yonas, an MS student in the lab of Dr. Annalisa Berta, was awarded "Best Poster presentation by a Pre-Doctoral Student" at the Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in Cape Town, South Africa (29 Nov. - 3 Dec. 2007). Josh's poster "Limb Anatomy and Evolution of Locomotion in Walruses" was one of approximately 300 student posters judged at the meeting.
Matt Brandley, a former M.S. student from the lab of Dr. Tod Reeder, was recently recognized in The Scientist for a "hot paper in ecology": M.C. Brandley et al. 2005. Partitioned Bayesian analyses, partition choice, and the phylogenetic relationships of scincid lizards. Systematic Biology 54:373-90.
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Oct. 2007:
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Dr. David Archibald was recently elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), for "distinguished contributions to our understanding of mammalian evolution during the Mesozoic and of the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary extinction event". This is quite an accomplishment for David and an honor for SDSU. Congratulations, Dave!
More information here.
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Sept. 2007:
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