Although much progress has been made in resolving the Fish Tree of Life, deep phylogenetic relationships among major marine fish lineages remain unstable. This project leverages cutting-edge, multiscale phylogenomic methods to resolve deep-time evolutionary relationships and establish a robust framework for investigating habitat transitions and key adaptations across the Fish Tree of Life.

A central theme of my research is the predictability of evolution, examined through a striking case of convergent evolution along the water column gradient. Repeated transitions between benthic and pelagic habitats offer powerful natural experiments for investigating evolutionary convergence in fishes. While the slender body plan is widespread among midwater and open-ocean fishes, the broader macroevolutionary consequences of habitat shifts along the water column remain poorly understood. To address this question, I am expanding my research across the Fish Tree of Life to investigate how the transition to a pelagic lifestyle drives both functional and molecular convergence.

I have applied a novel phylogenetically-informed GWAS (PhyloGWAS) approach to uncover genetic variants associated with body shape evolution in Lake Tanganyika cichlids—one of the most remarkable examples of adaptive radiation. By integrating fine-scale quantitative analyses of axial skeleton development with high-resolution ecomorphological and genomic data, I have gained new insights into how body plans adapt to diverse ecological niches within the lake.