| |
|
|
Dr. Thomas F. Duda
Research Interests:
Much of organismal evolution involves the origin of adaptations that enable species to utilize or acquire resources in new or different manners. Dr. Duda seeks to unravel the evolution of these types of adaptations through phylogenetic reconstruction and character mapping together with molecular evolutionary analyses of genes that are tightly coupled to adaptive evolution. Cone snails of the genus Conus are predatory marine snails that show specializations for different types of prey. While most species hunt particular types of polychaetes or hemichordates, other cone snails prey upon fish or other marine snails. Cone snails subdue prey by paralyzing them with a venom that is comprised of a cocktail of peptide neurotoxins termed conotoxins. The genes that encode conotoxins are members of large gene families and results from analyses of these gene families show that differences in venom composition among cone snail species are due to a number of mechanisms; these include the rapid adaptive divergence of genes, allelic diversity of conotoxin loci and differential expression of genes. Currently, Dr. Duda is using molecular evolutionary analyses to investigate the evolution of conotoxins and the relationship between conotoxin gene family evolution and the origins of feeding specializations of Conus. Because he is also interested in the factors that influence the diversification of taxa, particularly in the marine realm, he also uses phylogenetic and population genetic methods to examine the evolutionary history and biogeography of Conus.
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
Background:
Dr. Duda received a B.S. from Texas A&M University at Galveston and an M.A. from San Francisco State University. He studied in the graduate programs of the University of Hawaii and Harvard University and received his Ph.D. from Harvard. He was a Tupper Fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in the Republic of Panama and a Research Fellow at the University of Washington. Currently Dr. Duda also serves as a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
Recent Publications:
Duda, T.F., Jr., Rolán, E. 2004. Explosive radiation of Cape Verde Conus, a marine species flock. Molecular Ecology (in press).
Duda, T.F., Jr., Kohn, A.J. 2004. Species-level phylogeography and evolutionary history of the hyperdiverse marine gastropod genus Conus. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution (in press).
Duda, T.F., Jr., Palumbi, S.R. 2004. Gene expression and feeding ecology: evolution of piscivory in the venomous gastropod genus Conus. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 271:1165-1171
Duda, T.F., Jr., Bingham, J-P., Livett, B.G., Kohn, A.J., et al. 2004. How much at risk are cone snails? Science 303:955-957.
Duda, T.F., Jr., Vanhoye, D., Nicolas, P. 2002. Roles of diversifying selection and coordinated evolution in the evolution of amphibian antimicrobial peptides. Molecular Biology and Evolution 19:858-864.
Duda, T.F., Jr., Kohn, A.J., Palumbi, S.R. 2001. Origins of diverse feeding ecologies within Conus, a genus of venomous marine gastropods. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 73:391-409.
Duda, T.F., Jr., Palumbi, S.R. 2000. Evolutionary diversification of multi-gene families: allelic selection of toxins in predatory cone snails. Molecular Biology and Evolution 17:1286–1293.
Duda, T.F., Jr., Palumbi, S.R. 1999. Developmental shifts and species selection in gastropods. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 96:10272-10277.
Duda, T.F., Jr., Palumbi, S.R. 1999. Molecular genetics of ecological diversification: duplication and rapid evolution of toxin genes of the venomous gastropod Conus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 96:6820-6823.
Duda, T.F., Jr., Palumbi, S.R. 1999. Population structure of the black tiger prawn, Penaeus monodon, among western Indian Ocean and western Pacific populations. Marine Biology 134:705-710
France, S.C., Tachino, N., Duda, T.F., Jr., Shleser, R.A., Palumbi, S.R. 1999. Intraspecific genetic diversity in the marine shrimp Penaeus vannamei: multiple polymorphic elongation factor-1 alpha loci revealed by intron sequencing. Marine Biotechnology 1:261-268.
Palumbi, S.R., Grabowsky, G., Duda, T.F., Jr., Geyer, L., Tachino, N. 1997. Speciation and population genetic structure in tropical sea urchins. Evolution 51(5):1506-1517.
Mollusk Division
Museum of Zoology
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1079
Fax: 734-763-4080
email: tfduda@umich.edu
|
|
|
