Hernan Lopez-Fernandez

Affiliations

Program in the Environment, Michigan Institute for Data Science

Fields of study

Tropical freshwater fishes, systematics, macroevolution, evolutionary ecology, conservation

Research interests

I am interested in the evolutionary processes that originate “mega-diverse” biotic assemblages and the role of ecology in shaping the evolution of diversity. My lab studies the diversity, evolutionary history and conservation of fishes, particularly those from the Neotropical region of South and Central America. My research program focuses on the evolution of ecological and morphological specialization in driving phylogenetic divergence. Through fieldwork and collections studies we combine systematics, comparative morphology, and ecology, focusing on five goals: (1) describing the diversity and inferring the evolutionary relationships among genera and species of Neotropical cichlids and other fishes, (2) analyzing timing, rates and patterns of lineage and phenotypic diversification, (3) describing correlations between ecology and morphology in a phylogenetic framework, leading to development and testing of adaptive hypotheses, (4) analyzing patterns of ecological assembly to elucidate the effect of evolutionary history and adaptation on species interactions, and (5) determining the human impacts on Neotropical fishes and promoting their conservation.

Related Interests

• Phylogenetic theory, phylogenomics and comparative methods

• The use of the fossil record in dating molecular phylogenies and accounting for extinction of lineages and phenotypes

• Biomechanics, functional morphology and life history evolution

• Community phylogenetics and the integration of ecological and evolutionary time

• Uses of Next Generation Sequencing and coalescent methods in phylogeography and species delimitation

• The role of phylogenetic information in supporting conservation of biodiversity

• Discovery and documentation of biodiversity in remote, poorly explored tropical regions