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Teaching classes:
General Zoology
Animal Diversity and Phylogeny
Principles of Biology
Research Fields:
My work unfolds in the hidden spaces of aquatic sediments, where an entire universe of tiny animals, collectively known as the meiofauna, lives between grains of sand or burrows through the soft, shifting layers of mud. These organisms, span roughly 1.0 to 0.063 mm in body size and include representatives from nearly every major animal phylum. Some phyla, remarkably, exist only in this fascinating realm. It is a world that most people never see, yet it holds clues to some of biology’s most fundamental questions.
Within this microscopic landscape, I follow the evolutionary stories of groups like Gastrotricha, Scalidophora, and marine Harpacticoida, which challenge our assumptions about what animals are supposed to look like, how they move, and how they persist.
Advanced microscopy and molecular tools allow me to trace their relationships, revealing how lineages diverged, adapted, and persisted in environments that are both ancient and dynamic.
But understanding who these organisms are is only part of the story. I am equally drawn to the forces that shape their lives: the physical structure of sediments, the chemistry of the water that flows around them, the biological interactions that govern their survival. I study how natural disturbances and human driven stressors ripple through meiofaunal communities, altering their composition and resilience. In doing so, I aim to illuminate not just the biodiversity of this overlooked world, but the ecological processes that sustain it.
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