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Our research interests are here to understand micro- and macroevolutionary processes of marine invertebrates. On the microevolutionary scale, we are interested in why do marine invertebrate assemblages have the species they do. To what extent are their distributions a product of historical events such as dispersal, vicariance and extinction, or ecological adaptation? We use sponges and starfish as model systems and use primarily phylogeographical methods.
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On the macroevolutionary scale we are interested in the phylogenetic relationships between and among the lower metazoan lineages - are sponges monophyletic, what are the relationships to the eumetazoans? What are the implications for the evolution of key metazoan traits? We are also interested in the phylogenetic relationships within the "classes" of Porifera and the evolution of key-morphological and genetic characters, such as the aquiferous system, developmental modes, spiculogenesis, rDNA secondary structure and mitogenome evolution.
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