Lions and Tigers and Bison, Oh My! Adventures in Developing Experiential Learning Opportunities

During a Fall 2018 sabbatical, Nancy Holcroft, professor, Biology, developed experiential learning opportunities for JCCC students through two projects. The first project involved the creation of a dual-listed JCCC Honors/Science Special Topics biology course based on the National Collegiate Honors Council’s “Partners in the Parks” model. This course, to be offered in Spring 2020, will allow JCCC students to explore first-hand the biodiversity of the Black Hills and Badlands regions of South Dakota. In the second project, Holcroft performed servicelearning at Cedar Cove Feline Conservatory and Education Center in Louisburg, Kansas, in preparation for offering service-learning contracts in her JCCC General Zoology and Biology of Organisms courses. These experiences are summarized herein, including a comprehensive sabbatical summary, the draft course outline for the new Special Topics course, service-learning journals and summary evaluation, and a Cedar Cove service-learning white paper written for students considering service-learning at that facility

Will the Real Phylogeneticists Please Stand Up?

This is the publisher's version, also availalble electronically from http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/list/2011/2946.html.In a recently published commentary, Mooi & Gill asserted that there is a crisis brewing in systematic ichthyology caused by a failure of investigators to apply the basic tenets of outgroup comparison to recover clades based solely on shared apomorphic characters. The result, they claim, is that many recent analyses disregard real synapomorphies and discover clades by phenetic rather than phylogenetic principles. We take the opportunity to refute this claim and assert that matrix-based analyses, whether parametric or nonparametric, satisfy the basic tenets of Hennig’s methods, resulting in monophyletic groups confirmed by synapomorphies

A Response to Mooi, Williams and Gill

This is the publisher's version, which the author has permission to share. The original version may be found at the following link: http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/list/2011/2946.htm

Species-specific bioluminescence facilitates speciation in the deep sea

The vast darkness of the deep sea is an environment with few obvious genetic isolating barriers, and little is known regarding the macroevolutionary processes that have shaped present-day biodiversity in this habitat. Bioluminescence, the production and emission of light from a living organism through a chemical reaction, is thought to occur in approximately 80 % of the eukaryotic life that inhabits the deep sea (water depth greater than 200 m). In this study, we show, for the first time, that deep-sea fishes that possess species-specific bioluminescent structures (e.g., lanternfishes, dragonfishes) are diversifying into new species at a more rapid rate than deep-sea fishes that utilize bioluminescence in ways that would not promote isolation of populations (e.g., camouflage, predation). This work adds to our understanding of how life thrives and evolution shaped present-day biodiversity in the deep sea, the largest and arguably least explored habitat on earth. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00227-014-2406-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Will the Real Phylogeneticists Please Stand Up?

In a recently published commentary, Mooi & Gill asserted that there is a crisis brewing in systematic ichthyology caused by a failure of investigators to apply the basic tenets of outgroup comparison to recover clades based solely on shared apomorphic characters. The result, they claim, is that many recent analyses disregard real synapomorphies and discover clades by phenetic rather than phylogenetic principles. We take the opportunity to refute this claim and assert that matrix-based analyses, whether parametric or nonparametric, satisfy the basic tenets of Hennig’s methods, resulting in monophyletic groups confirmed by synapomorphies

The Tree of Life and a New Classification of Bony Fishes

The tree of life of fishes is in a state of flux because we still lack a comprehensive phylogeny that includes all major groups. The situation is most critical for a large clade of spiny-finned fishes, traditionally referred to as percomorphs, whose uncertain relationships have plagued ichthyologists for over a century. Most of what we know about the higher-level relationships among fish lineages has been based on morphology, but rapid influx of molecular studies is changing many established systematic concepts. We report a comprehensive molecular phylogeny for bony fishes that includes representatives of all major lineages. DNA sequence data for 21 molecular markers (one mitochondrial and 20 nuclear genes) were collected for 1410 bony fish taxa, plus four tetrapod species and two chondrichthyan outgroups (total 1416 terminals). Bony fish diversity is represented by 1093 genera, 369 families, and all traditionally recognized orders. The maximum likelihood tree provides unprecedented resolution and high bootstrap support for most backbone nodes, defining for the first time a global phylogeny of fishes. The general structure of the tree is in agreement with expectations from previous morphological and molecular studies, but significant new clades arise. Most interestingly, the high degree of uncertainty among percomorphs is now resolved into nine well-supported supraordinal groups. The order Perciformes, considered by many a polyphyletic taxonomic waste basket, is defined for the first time as a monophyletic group in the global phylogeny. A new classification that reflects our phylogenetic hypothesis is proposed to facilitate communication about the newly found structure of the tree of life of fishes. Finally, the molecular phylogeny is calibrated using 60 fossil constraints to produce a comprehensive time tree. The new time-calibrated phylogeny will provide the basis for and stimulate new comparative studies to better understand the evolution of the amazing diversity of fishes