Graduate student Des Ramirez walked away with the lab NCAA bracket challenge, scoring a 96.4% over runner-up, sixth grader, Ian Oakley. Des presciently,nay prophetically chose Big 10 teams like MSU and WI to go deep into the tournament. Second place finisher Ian got off to a good start in the first round, but consistently lost ground after that. Third place finisher and professor Todd Oakley had his brackets completely busted early on when his alma mater, Duke, were knocked out in the first round. At least he filled a bracket, unlike anyone else in the lab.

FORT LAUDERDALE-DAVIE, Fla. – Pop Quiz: what creatures make up more than 70% of the approximately 1.9 million described species on earth and have long served as model organisms in many areas of biology? If you guessed invertebrates, you’re right!

Recordings from the Third Annual Spring Symposium, Genome-scale Phylogenetics, hosted by NMNH’s Frontiers in Phylogenetics Program 

Elizabeth Pennisi has written an article about the SICB symposium organized by Todd Oakley and former lab member Jeanne Serb, now a professor at Iowa State University. The article highlights recent findings from our lab and other labs, showing that several animals showing that opsins are used not only in eyes, but in other contexts as well. Our lab is working on extraocular photoreceptors in Cnidaria, Cephalopoda, and Polyplacophora.