The evolution of Amphibia

Our research focuses on the use of molecular phylogenies to elucidate evolutionary patterns, and the processes that produce them. We are trying to understand the relationship between tempo and mode of evolution in relation to biogeography, speciation, and morphological diversification. Our work can be divided in four main themes, although they all influence each other:

• Natural History: use of molecular phylogenetics to explain evolution of species and behaviour.
• Biogeography: use of molecular phylogenetics to study biogeographical hypotheses, such as break-up of Pangaea and Gondwana, the importance of sea-level changes on evolution of terrestrial animals etc.
• Genome Evolution: the combination of molecular biology and bio-informatics to answer some major questions in genome evolution (genome or chromosome duplications, tetraploïdy...) of amphibians.
• Evo-Devo: the merger of three exciting fields, developmental biology, evolutionary genetics and computer sciences to gain insights in structural and adaptive changes during vertebrate evolution.

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