Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Complex life cycles (those involving larval stages) are numerically dominant among marine invertebrates. A successful transition between larval and juvenile stages (metamorphosis) is critical for recruitment to adult populations and involves the integration of a developmental transformation with habitat selection. An understanding of how this is accomplished for even a single organism remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that innovative research on metamorphosis of marine invertebrates requires an interdisciplinary approach. Proposed research from my lab includes ongoing investigations into (i) signaling mechanisms that control the timing of metamorphosis among several taxa and (ii) the relationship between juvenile ecology and the function of identified signaling systems that control the timing of metamorphosis. I am also interested in the evolution of morphological novelties and to that end will conduct research on (i) the ancestry, development and morphology of a novel sea urchin larval structure and (ii) the origin of the vertebrate neural crest as reconstructed from the sea squirts, their closest living relatives.