Philip Novack-Gottshall
Benedictine University, IL·Ecology & Evolution
Some animal groups have evolved many different ways of living, while others stick to just a few. Why this happens is a central question about how evolution produces innovation.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Earth & Environmental Science
Mathematics & Statistics
- Topics
paleobiology
paleontology
paleoecology
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Test four hypotheses about how ecological diversity differs among marine animal phyla and classes and through Phanerozoic time, using a quantitative life-habit database covering all known marine animal genera.
- Measure how often animal clades converge on similar adaptive strategies by comparing their positions in ecospace, a map of possible ways of life.
- Build the largest open-source database of fossil marine ecology, body sizes and stratigraphic ranges, and develop new statistical and visualization methods for ecospace and morphospace analysis.
More about the research
Until now, there has been no objective way to measure this variation. This project draws on a new quantitative database of life habits, such as how animals feed, move and live, that covers every known genus of marine animal. It aims to give the first statistical description of how ecological diversity in all major animal groups has changed through the Phanerozoic, the last roughly half-billion years of animal life.
Why it matters
This is basic science about the history of life. A statistical record of how animal groups have used ecological opportunity could clarify the limits on evolutionary innovation. The open database and new methods could support future studies of how ecological diversity has changed through time, and the museum modules could help the public see how fossils inform ecological questions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jonathan Payne
Stanford University, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Extend a standardized database of marine animal body size measurements spanning the last 575 million years, incorporating previously unpublished Ediacaran body-size data from the interval preceding the main animal fossil record.
Sarah Sheffield
Binghamton University, NY·Ecology & Evolution
Test how ancient climate events affected heterochrony, meaning shifts in developmental timing, in Paleozoic echinoderms, using phylogenetic trees built from museum, database and literature data.
Peter Siver
Connecticut College, CT·Ecology & Evolution
Document new species, physical traits and past environmental conditions for each silica-bearing freshwater protist group in an 82-million-year North American fossil collection, using scanning electron microscopy data.
The school
Benedictine University: 1 labs on PI Pages.
Reach out
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