Author: zamudiolab

Welcome Chloé Allen!

We are so happy to have recruited Chloé Allen to the KZ Lab! Chloé attended the University of Northern Georgia as an undergrad, where she gathered research experience working on toads and their parasites. She also did an REU at the California Academy of Sciences working with Rayna Bell on African puddle frogs. Welcome to the lab Chloé!

Welcome to three new grad students in the lab!

Three new grad students are joining the lab! We are super excited to have them and build our new UT group! Céline Carneiro (left) joins us from University of Florida and her work focuses on genomics and biodiversity. Rebecca Clemons (center) is coming from University of Michigan and her interests are in disease ecology. And Britt White (right) is already at UT and a new member of the lab co-advised with Justin Havird; her interests are in the evolution of color polymorphism in lizards.

Looking forward to some great science in the next years!

KZ lab @UTAustin is recruiting! Graduate and Post-doc applications welcome this Fall

The Zamudio Lab will be recruiting graduate students to begin in the EEB Graduate Program at UT Austin in Fall 2022. Information about the graduate application process and the lab can be found here.

This Fall we will also be recruiting at least one post-doc to begin in 2022. More details on post-doc openings will be posted in late October 2021 – keep an eye out for that announcement here and on Twitter (@KZ_UTAustin). If you are interested in developing a project for an independent post-doctoral position, please contact me so we can discuss potential projects.

Zamudio Lab Condemns Racism and Proposes Action

Graphic by Maria Akopyan.

We, the members of the Zamudio lab, are horrified by the continued violence against Black people that has yet again made it to the forefront of the news cycle. We recognize that racism and white supremacism are pervasive both within academia and in society at large. Antiracism requires action and education. We stand in solidarity with our Black students, and those of us who are not Black recognize that we have an immense amount of work to do.

Cornell’s President Martha Pollack issued a statement announcing immediate actions to strengthen unity and support our community. We applaud our president for her active response. Our lab agreed that for highest impact, antiracist actions need to happen at all levels of organization, from individual labs, departments, colleges, to the entire university. 

Given the recent murders of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and the countless others who have lost their lives to racism, and the violence that continues against BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), we as a lab group commit to taking the following steps:

  1. We will read ‘How to Be an Antiracist’, by Ibram X. Kendi, as a lab, and members of the lab (especially our white members, but welcoming all) will meet every two weeks to discuss and reflect. Thereafter we will continue devoting time each month to reading works and engaging in exercises to self-educate about the history of racism in our country, the practice of anti-racism, and dismantling white privilege.
  2. We will as a group read the research papers on what works and what does not work to curb police violence, to inform our own advocacy efforts (e.g., we will take action by calling our local representatives in Ithaca and demand that the police department be reformed according to our research).
  3. We will work toward clarity in action and expectations, and training in communication across differences, and in educational practices so that BIPOC students and trainees feel safe, welcome, and supported.
  4. We will continue to support Diversity Preview Weekend and advocate for its full institutionalization at the Graduate School level.
  5. We will center the voices of, advocate for, and learn from Black and other POC in evolutionary organismal biology by promoting their work on our website, providing mentorship, and disseminating their work on social media.
  6. In collaboration with the Cornell Herpetological Society, we will host at least one event per semester devoted to the intersection of herpetological research, inclusion, safety in outdoor spaces, and equity/diversity.
  7. We will provide support to groups at Cornell working to diversify STEM including SACNAS-Cornell.

We recognize that this is just a start to dismantling the systemic racism that has resulted in low diversity in STEM, and we look forward to continuing to improve our response.

Signed by all members of the Zamudio lab:

Jordan Garcia

Maria Akopyan

Cinnamon Mittan

Lina Arcila Hernandez

Cait McDonald

Megan Barkdull

David Chang van Oordt

Nicole Chodkowski

Anat Belasen

Kelly Zamudio

Repeated evolution of terrestrial breeding in Atlantic Coastal Forest frogs

Our paper on the evolution of terrestrial breeding in frogs is out in Evolution! This was a fun one to write, and also the first chapter of Fabio de Sa’s PhD thesis.

Using comparative analyses and a multilocus phylogeny for the genera Cycloramphus and Zachaenus, our paper shows that terrestrial breeding has evolved three times in the clade, from a stream breeding (saxicolous) ancestor. Each time that happened, we see a correlated “shrinking” on the part of males, but not females, resulting in larger degree of sexual size dimorphism between the sexes.

Our conclusion is that by moving onto land, and breeding in concealed terrestrial chambers, or in leaf-litter, males are released from costly male-male competition that is typical for males defending territories and females in exposed stream breeding environments.

  • C. acangatan
  • C. bolitoglossus
  • C. fuliginosus
Two terrestrial breeding species, Cycloramphus acangatan and C. bolitoglossus (Photo Credits: CFB Haddad), and a stream-breeding saxicolous species C. fuliginosus (Photo Credit: LF Toledo).