The Tollis Lab is part of a $1.5 million dollar project awarded by the National Science Foundation entitled “Collaborative Research: The Genomic Basis of Evolutionary Innovations in the Squamate Tree of Life” (DEB2323124), along with collaborators Dr. Frank Burbrink at the American Museum of Natural History and Dr. Tiago Simões at Princeton University.
We will combine extensive phenotypic sampling from 370 living and fossil squamates with extensive genomic sampling of species from >90% of squamate families (including the de novo sequencing and assembly of >100 genomes), with the goal of identifying branches in the squamate phylogeny where the are observed changes in the rate of both phenotypes and genomic regions.
The project will take three years and we will be hiring postdocs for each institution (NAU, AMNH, Princeton)! More soon!