DEPARTMENT OF INTEGRATIVE BIOLOGY
SHARMA LAB
SHARMA LAB
Welcome to the Sharma Lab! Our research broadly addresses macroevolution of invertebrates through the lenses of phylogenomics, historical biogeography, and comparative development, with emphasis on arthropods.
This body of work integrates three avenues of inquiry:
(1) How is biodiversity distributed in time and space?
(2) How do geological phenomena affect the shape of biodiversity over time?
(3) What are the genetic mechanisms that underlie body plan diversification?
This body of work integrates three avenues of inquiry:
(1) How is biodiversity distributed in time and space?
(2) How do geological phenomena affect the shape of biodiversity over time?
(3) What are the genetic mechanisms that underlie body plan diversification?
Lab News & Events 2018 (updated 17 September):
17 September 2018: Congratulations to Logan March, Rachel Smaby, and Emily Setton on the publication of their work on antennal and leg patterning in insects! The work appears here.
22 June 2018: Congratulations to Emily Setton on winning an NSF travel award to attend the GIGA III meeting in Curaçao! Emily will be presenting her work on the use of differential expression tools to analyze functional experiments in spiders.
22 May 2018: Our collaborative work on a homeotic scorpion mutant from Asia has just been published in BMC Evolutionary Biology! This report constitutes the intersection of natural history, paleontology, and development in scorpions.
18 May 2018: Our lab has just published the first transcriptomic analysis of pseudoscorpion venom! Many congratulations to Carlos Santibáñez-López, who led the bioinformatics, and Andrew Ontano, who collecting this material on his first field trip with Mark Harvey in Western Australia last summer!
15 May 2018: The written exercise of the course Zoology 957 (Topics in the Evolutionary Developmental Biology of Animals) has been profiled in spring 2018's newsletter of the Writing Across the Curriculum program. Check it out here!
11 May 2018: Congratulations to Guilherme Gainett on winning the International Society of Arachnology's Jan and Oscar Francke Award! This grant support Guilherme's efforts to pursue the study of leg elongation in whip spiders (Amblypygi)
9 May 2018: Congratulation to Emily Setton on winning an American Arachnological Society research award! Emily will be traveling to Colorado to collect the embryos of mygalomorph spiders this summer.
5 May 2018: Congratulations to Guilherme Gainett on (a) winning a UW-Madison travel award for attendance at the GIGA meeting in Curaçao, (b) winning the Davis research grant for developmental genetic study of leg elongation in whip spiders (Amblypygi), and (c) the acceptance of his paper in the Journal of Morphology. All in one week!
26 March 2018: Congratulations to Emily Setton on the publication of her undergraduate research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)! This work of (mostly) chelicerate evodevo features data from spiders, scorpions, harvestmen, centipedes, horseshoe crabs, onychophorans, and pycnogonids. Check it out here.
2 February 2018: We have just published the first phylogenomic dating of the scorpion tree of life! Check it out here.
24 January 2018: Congratulations to Jesus Ballesteros on being awarded a National Geographic Society grant! Dr. Ballesteros will be conducting fieldwork and population genomic surveys to investigate the evolution of cave dwelling arachnids in Israel.
17 January 2018: Congratulations to Jesus Ballesteros, whose painstaking and meticulous work on species delimitation in spiders just appeared online! See the article here.
7 January 2018: A lovely SICB meeting in San Francisco, with wonderful feedback for students and postdocs on their presentations! This year, PI Sharma is honored to serve as the Secretary-Elect of the Division of Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Congratulations as well to Emily Setton for a Charlotte Magnum Award!
17 September 2018: Congratulations to Logan March, Rachel Smaby, and Emily Setton on the publication of their work on antennal and leg patterning in insects! The work appears here.
22 June 2018: Congratulations to Emily Setton on winning an NSF travel award to attend the GIGA III meeting in Curaçao! Emily will be presenting her work on the use of differential expression tools to analyze functional experiments in spiders.
22 May 2018: Our collaborative work on a homeotic scorpion mutant from Asia has just been published in BMC Evolutionary Biology! This report constitutes the intersection of natural history, paleontology, and development in scorpions.
18 May 2018: Our lab has just published the first transcriptomic analysis of pseudoscorpion venom! Many congratulations to Carlos Santibáñez-López, who led the bioinformatics, and Andrew Ontano, who collecting this material on his first field trip with Mark Harvey in Western Australia last summer!
15 May 2018: The written exercise of the course Zoology 957 (Topics in the Evolutionary Developmental Biology of Animals) has been profiled in spring 2018's newsletter of the Writing Across the Curriculum program. Check it out here!
11 May 2018: Congratulations to Guilherme Gainett on winning the International Society of Arachnology's Jan and Oscar Francke Award! This grant support Guilherme's efforts to pursue the study of leg elongation in whip spiders (Amblypygi)
9 May 2018: Congratulation to Emily Setton on winning an American Arachnological Society research award! Emily will be traveling to Colorado to collect the embryos of mygalomorph spiders this summer.
5 May 2018: Congratulations to Guilherme Gainett on (a) winning a UW-Madison travel award for attendance at the GIGA meeting in Curaçao, (b) winning the Davis research grant for developmental genetic study of leg elongation in whip spiders (Amblypygi), and (c) the acceptance of his paper in the Journal of Morphology. All in one week!
26 March 2018: Congratulations to Emily Setton on the publication of her undergraduate research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)! This work of (mostly) chelicerate evodevo features data from spiders, scorpions, harvestmen, centipedes, horseshoe crabs, onychophorans, and pycnogonids. Check it out here.
2 February 2018: We have just published the first phylogenomic dating of the scorpion tree of life! Check it out here.
24 January 2018: Congratulations to Jesus Ballesteros on being awarded a National Geographic Society grant! Dr. Ballesteros will be conducting fieldwork and population genomic surveys to investigate the evolution of cave dwelling arachnids in Israel.
17 January 2018: Congratulations to Jesus Ballesteros, whose painstaking and meticulous work on species delimitation in spiders just appeared online! See the article here.
7 January 2018: A lovely SICB meeting in San Francisco, with wonderful feedback for students and postdocs on their presentations! This year, PI Sharma is honored to serve as the Secretary-Elect of the Division of Evolutionary Developmental Biology. Congratulations as well to Emily Setton for a Charlotte Magnum Award!