E&E Seminar: “From shallow waters to the deep: revealing hidden animal biology with invertebrate genomics” by Tauana Cunha (Loyola University Chicago)
October 6, 2026
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Location
SELE 4289
Calendar
Download iCal FileJoin us October 6, 2026 at 12:30pm in SELE 4289 for an E&E Seminar featuring "From shallow waters to the deep: revealing hidden animal biology with invertebrate genomics" by Dr. Tauana Cunha (Loyola University Chicago)
Host: Ignacio Escalante Meza
Abstract: Invertebrates hold the greatest diversity of animals, and with it the greatest potential to understand animal biology — hidden in habitats we rarely visit, on museum shelves, and in genomes that have never been sequenced. I will show how field exploration, natural history collections, and genomics together bring them to light. First, hidden diversity: from a reef survey in the Maldives that recovered over 100 gastropod species (half never recorded there), to deep-sea footage of seamounts at 3,500 m, we document marine life with vouchers, images, and DNA sequencing to elucidate species distributions and divergence across oceans. Second, hidden history: we combine genomic datasets with models that accommodate phylogenomic conflict to resolve gastropod relationships spanning more than 400 million years, and to show why some questions resist resolution. Third, hidden biology: with the first chromosome-level genome for parasitic hairworms (phylum Nematomorpha), we find the loss of genes that build cilia — organelles otherwise conserved across eukaryotes — providing the genomic basis for a phenotype previously only hypothesized from morphology, and marking a unique transition in animal evolution.
Date posted
Apr 9, 2026
Date updated
Sep 22, 2026