 Caring for zebrafish fry |
One of the most fundamental aspects of evolution concerns the generation of phenotypic variation on which natural selection can act. Study of the origin of variation has been neglected relative to study of the dynamics of variation in populations under selection and drift, but the resurgence of interest in development and evolution has greatly invigorated this field. In the last decade or so, members of my lab have investigated the role of diet in producing variation in skull morphology and body shape of cichlid fishes (Wimberger 1991) and the developmental processes producing different color patterns of danios McClure (1998). Currently, I am collaborating with theoretical population geneticist, Alexey Kondrashov, to determine the genomic number of early-acting recessive lethals found in wild-caught zebrafish. |