Meet Cal Scientists: Evolutionary Luminaries

For each of these Cal scientists, evolution is an important part of his or her work. Read about what exciting projects they're working on now!

• Name: Chris Clark
• Title: Graduate Student
• Department: Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
• Research: I study how hummingbirds use their tails in flight and how they produce sounds with their feathers. I look at both the physics of how the feathers make sounds, and also the behaviors that hummingbirds use to cause their feathers to produce sounds. Evolution has generated a wide range of hummingbirds and tail shapes. So, understanding how evolution works allows me to study how and why hummingbirds produce sounds with their feathers, and use their tails in flight.

• Name: Rebecca Jabbour
• Title: Postdoctoral Scholar
• Department: Human Evolution Research Center
• Research: I study skeletal variation in modern apes and humans so we can better interpret variation in the fossil record. My work is motivated by an interest in evolution — specifically the evolutionary history of apes and humans, as documented in the fossil record. In addition, evolution provides the best explanations for many of the patterns of variation I observe in modern apes and humans.

• Name: Carole Hickman
• Title: Professor
• Department: Dept. of Integrative Biology
  
• Research: I am especially intrigued by unusual patterns in nature that are repeated in many different organisms. Repetition of pattern and structure often has a mathematical and aesthetic elegance that is expressed on the dramatically different scales of developmental, ecological, and evolutionary time. Evolution provides the documentation of change and the explanation of how change occurs. Repetition of patterns may be explained by shared ancestry, by convergence on good structural solutions to functional problems, or by rules of development and growth. In any case, evolution is the grand arena in which we seek causal explanations of form and pattern in living and fossil organisms.

• Name: Erin Meyer
  
• Title: Graduate Student
  
• Department: Dept. of Integrative Biology
  
• Research: My dissertation research focuses on the population genetics, historical biogeography, and conservation of Cittarium pica (West Indian Topshell), a species of marine snail that is endemic to the Caribbean region and Bermuda. Without an understanding of how evolution works at the molecular level, I would not be able to conduct any aspect of my research. Determining the genetic variation and the evolutionary uniqueness of a species is vital to revealing historical biogeographic patterns, evaluating extinction risk, and prioritizing conservation projects.

• Name: Abby Moore
  
• Title: Graduate Student Instructor
  
• Department: Dept. of Integrative Biology
  
• Research: My research is focused on the evolution of the gumplants, Grindelia, which are related to sunflowers. Different species of Grindelia grow in both North and South America. I am trying to figure out where gumplants came from originally, North or South America, and how many times they were dispersed between the continents. Evolution is the basis of my science because the only way I can understand why plants are the way they are is by trying to figure out the way they were in the past and the evolutionary path they took to get from there to here. Evolution provides the historical context for the species that are alive today and trying to understand this history is fascinating to me.

• Name: David Wake
  
• Title: Professor and Curator of Herpetology
  
• Department: Dept. of Integrative Biology
  
• Research: I study how lineages of animals evolve and diversify—how species form and how structures (such as bones, tongues, brains, hands and feet) evolve different forms and functions. The taxonomic focus of my work is the amphibians, in particular salamanders—all approximately 600 species in the world. For me there are two central biological questions: How do organisms work and how have they come to work. Studying function alone is at best half of the issue. For me the organizing principle in biology is evolution—how has this vast diversification of life come about?

• Name: Gary Richards
  
• Title: Postdoctoral Scholar
  
• Department: Human Evolution Research Center
  
• Research: I study human craniofacial ontogeny (growth and development), and my research focuses on both normal and abnormal growth processes. Studying ontogeny in modern people only reveals part of the story, because skulls are made up of individual pieces, each with their own evolutionary history. Learning how the skull parts have changed helps us to understand why globally distributed populations can look so different and yet be so similar. There is also a practical application for developing new treatments that can improve the outcomes for children with craniofacial malformations.