Mathias Symposium 2006

Bodega Marine Laboratory/Reserve
February 24-26, 2006

2006 Lecturers

Carole Hickman
(PhD, Stanford University, 1975) is Professor of Integrative Biology at UCB.

Her research “strives to understand how the building blocks of life come together to produce distinctive structural patterns, and thinks about how these patterns are grown — starting with a single cell even in very complex multicellular organisms — and how they change and evolve.”

Overview of Research Interests
“My research seeks new understanding of the diversity of structure and function in living and fossil organisms by integrating formal (morphogenetic) historical (phylogenetic) and functional (adaptive) explanations. Theoretical, constructional, evolutionary, and develop-mental morphology provide the conceptual and practical tools that I use to analyze structure and function. Molluscs are the primary subject organisms for defining principles of structure. I have developed new model systems: the gastropod radula, suspension feeding devices, and the gastropod larval shell, as well as novel tools that include design spaces, ecospaces, ethospaces, and developmental spaces in which phylogenetic trajectories illustrate macroevolutionary trends and patterns.

As paleobiologist and geologist, I am investigating the taphonomic assembly and patterning of shell beds in the fossil record and the responses of community architecture to global climate change during the Cenozoic Era. Recently completed projects include an astrobiological theory of the role of microbial-metazoan interactions in extreme environments, an analysis of the “problem of similarity,” and an analysis of changes in shell biomineralization at metamorphosis that are reflected in funeous composite bioinorganic materials.”
[https://ib.berkeley.edu/research/interests/research_profile.php?person=183]


Kaustuv Roy
(PhD, University of Chicago, 1994) is Associate Professor of Biology at UCSD.

His research interests include macroevolution and macroecology, marine conservation, and biotic effects of climate change. His research is described at https://www-biology.ucsd.edu/faculty/roy.html.
Overview of Research Interests
“Research in my lab is focused on understanding the processes that determine the spatial and temporal distribution of biological diversity in the sea, emphasizing not just the traditional counts of species, but also functional groups and morphological diversity. In particular we are using marine mollusks as a focal group to (i) test hypotheses about the origin and maintenance of the spatial patterns of species diversity in the ocean; (ii) better understand the effects of climatic and environmental change on shallow marine species and communities; and (iii) quantify spatial patterns of morphological diversity in marine invertebrates and explore the ecological and evolutionary basis of these patterns. In addition, we have just initiated a large research project quantifying the effects of human impacts on the rocky intertidal biota of southern California. Research in my lab is interdisciplinary in nature and combines ecological and biogeographic data from living populations with the deep time perspective afforded by the rich fossil record of mollusks, as well as collaborative work on molecular phylogeny and population structures of selected clades.” https://www-biology.ucsd.edu/labs/roy/RLresearch.html


download a PDF of the Symposium program and abstracts