Emilie Richards
I am an evolutionary biologist interested in how the fascinatingly intricate interactions between microevolutionary processes (mutation, selection, gene flow, drift) lead to the diverse macroevolutionary patterns (ecological, morphological and species diversity). That interest has primarily led me to studying the genetic basis of adaptation and genomic consequences of hybridization in several fish systems. I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota in the department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior. I am working in Dr Suzanne McGaugh’s lab and applying genomic comparative approaches and leveraging experimental and natural hybrids between cave and surface populations of the Mexican tetra (A. mexicanus) to uncover the genetic basis of the complex adaptations these fish made to cave life. These discoveries from the hybrids can help us better understand a range of interesting observations from why cavefish sleep less and have higher body fat than surface fish - yet don’t develop pathologies like those seen in humans with similar traits, to how predictable the genetic consequences of hybridization are when divergent genomes collide in extreme environments.
Selected Publications:
1. R. Moran, E. J. Richards, et al 2023. Selection-driven trait loss in independently evolved cavefish populations. Nat. Communications. 14(1), 2557. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-37909-8
2. E. J. Richards, J. A. McGirr, J. R. Wang, M. E. St. John, J. W. Poelstra, M. J. Solano, D. C. O’Connell, B. J. Turner, C. H. Martin, A vertebrate adaptive radiation is assembled from an ancient and disjunct spatiotemporal landscape. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 118 (2021), doi:10.1073/pnas.2011811118.
3. E. J. Richards, M. R. Servedio, C. H. Martin, Searching for Sympatric Speciation in the Genomic Era. BioEssays. 41, 1900047 (2019).
4. E. J. Richards, J. M. Brown, A. J. Barley, R. A. Chong, R. C. Thomson, Variation Across Mitochondrial Gene Trees Provides Evidence for Systematic Error: How Much Gene Tree Variation Is Biological? Syst. Biol. 67, 847–860 (2018).
