Research in the Weisrock Lab combines genetics, genomics, and evolutionary biology.  Much of our research centers on using genetics to resolve the geographic boundaries of species in nature, reconstruct the relationships among these lineages, and address the mechanisms that have led to their formation.  At the population level our research seeks to understand the adaptive and non-adaptive factors that influence gene flow and drive speciation. At a more macroevolutionary level we use phylogenetic approaches to resolve the evolutionary history of species assemblages and infer the rates at which they form.

Research projects in our lab cover a broad taxonomic range, from speciation in North American Tiger Salamanders, to evolutionary diversification in Malagasy Lemurs.  The advent of genomics has been especially valuable for our research and we increasingly focus our efforts on analytical approaches that permit the summarization of population-genetic and phylogenetic information from across the genome.  As a corallary to this approach, we forge close collaborations with collegues in Statistics to develop new analytical approaches applicable to multi-locus data.

For more information about lab members and their research, visit the Weisrock Lab website.

Weisrock DW, Rasoloarison RM, Fiorentino I, Ralison JM, Goodman SM, Kappeler PM, Yoder AD. 2009. Multilocus resolution of extraordinary species diversity in the Malagasy mouse lemurs. PLoS One, In Press

Groeneveld LF, Weisrock DW, Rasoloarison RM, Yoder AD, Kappeler PM. 2009. Species delimitation in lemurs: multiple genetic loci reveal low levels of species diversity in the genus Cheirogaleus. BMC Evolutionary Biology 9:30.

Horvath JE, Weisrock DW, Embry SL, Fiorentino I, Balhoff JP, Kappeler P, Wray GA, Willard HF, Yoder AD. 2008. Development and application of a phylogenomic toolkit: resolving the evolutionary history of Madagascar’s lemurs. Genome Research 18:489-499.

Weisrock DW, Shaffer HB, Storz BL, Storz SR, Voss SR. 2006. Multiple nuclear gene sequences identify phylogenetic species boundaries in the rapidly radiating clade of Mexican ambystomatid salamanders. Molecular Ecology 15:2489-2503.

Weisrock DW, Larson A. 2006. Testing hypotheses of speciation in the Plethodon jordani species complex with allozymes and mitochondrial DNA sequences. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 89:25-51.

*Kozak KH, *Weisrock DW, Larson A. 2006. Rapid lineage splitting in a non-adaptive radiation: phylogenetic analysis of diversification rates in eastern North American woodland salamanders (genus Plethodon). Proceedings of the Royal Society B 273:539-546.

Weisrock DW, Harmon LH, Larson A. 2005. Resolving Deep Phylogenetic Relationships among salamander families: analyses of mitochondrial and nuclear genomic data. Systematic Biology 54:758-777.

Weisrock DW, Kozak KH, Larson A. 2005. Phylogeographic analysis of mitochondrial gene flow and introgression in the salamander, Plethodon shermani. Molecular Ecology 14:1457-1472.

Putta S, Smith JJ, Walker J, Rondet M, Weisrock DW, Monaghan J, Kump K, Yan X, Stromberg A, King DC, Maness NJ, Habermann B, Tanaka E, Bryant SV, Gardiner DM, Parichy DM, Voss SR. 2004. From biomedicine to natural history research: expressed sequence tag resources for ambystomatid salamanders. BMC Genomics 5:54