QSB Group
Faculty & Research
Grad Students
Faculty
MICHAEL N DAWSON, PhDAssistant Professor
School of Natural Sciences
Email: mdawson@ucmerced.edu
Phone: (209)228-4056
Fax: (209)228-4053
www: Lab website
Education:
Ph.D., 2000 - University of California, Los Angeles
M.Sc., 1994 - University of York, England
B.Sc., 1993 - University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England
Research Interests (View)
Millions of species demonstrate that evolution happens, but few illuminate the process. My lab focuses on elucidating the origins, maintenance, and loss of marine biodiversity, from molecular to ecosystem levels. We are interested in how molecular variation explains and causes differences between individuals, populations, species, and higher taxa, and how the environment shapes genetic, organismal, population, and community variation. Our work scales from micro-evolution to macro-evolution and integrates biological and physical sciences. Topic areas: adaptation, ecological genetics, evolutionary ecology; population genetics, phylogeography, biogeography, phylogenetics; speciation, systematics, taxonomy; behavior, morphology; climate change, invasive species, marine protected areas
Representative Publications (View)- Dawson M.N (2001) Phylogeography in coastal marine animals: a solution from California? Journal of Biogeography 28: 723-736.
- Dawson, M.N, K.D. Louie, M. Barlow, D.K. Jacobs, C.C. Swift (2002) Comparative phylogeography of sympatric sister species, Clevelandia ios and Eucyclogobius newberryi (Teleostei, Gobiidae), across the California Transition Zone. Molecular Ecology 11: 1065-1075.
- Dawson, M.N, W.M. Hamner (2003) Geographic variation and behavioral evolution in marine plankton: the case of Mastigias (Scyphozoa: Rhizostomeae). Marine Biology 143: 1161-1174.
- Dawson, M.N (2004) Some implications of molecular phylogenetics for understanding biodiversity in jellyfishes, with an emphasis on Scyphozoa. Hydrobiologia 530/531: 249-260.
- Dawson, M.N, W.M. Hamner (2005) Rapid evolutionary radiation of marine zooplankton in peripheral environments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 102: 9235-9240.
- Dawson, M.N, A.S. Gupta, M.H. England (2005) Coupled biophysical global ocean model and molecular genetic analyses identify multiple introductions of cryptogenic species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 102: 11968-11973.
- Martin, L.E., M.N Dawson, L.J. Bell, P.L. Colin (2005) Marine lake ecosystem dynamics illustrate ENSO variation in the tropical western Pacific. Biology Letters 2: 144-147.
- Dawson, M.N, R. K. Grosberg, L. W. Botsford (2006) Connectivity in marine protected areas. Science 313:43-44.
