Rodney L. Honeycutt’s Collaborative Research on Cichlid Fishes in the Neotropics

After receiving a National Science Foundation grant from 2005-2008, Rodney L. Honeycutt and his collaborators Hernán López-Fernández and Kirk O. Winemiller have been studying the evolution of cichlid fishes in the Neotropics.

Their most recent collaborative article "Testing for Ancient Adaptive Radiations in Neotropical Cichlid Fishes" was recently featured in Evolution: International Journal of Organic Revolution this past spring.

Honeycutt shared some of the background and motivation for his collaborative research...

"Hernán López-Fernández was the PhD student of Professor Kirk O. Winemiller and me during the time that I was at Texas A&M University.  Since coming to Pepperdine, I have continued collaborating with both Hernán and Kirk.  The research highlighted in this paper is the culmination of a collaboration among the three of us that started with the receipt of a grant from the National Science Foundation.

This paper represents the fifth in a series pertaining to the evolution of cichlid fishes in the Neotropics.  Two other papers were published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, one in PLOS ONE, and one in Zootaxa.

The paper in Evolution is exciting because it is a synthesis of all the research that we have been conducting on this group of fishes.  Clearly, Hernán has been the driving force in this research.  Since a small boy in Venezuela, Hernán has loved cichlid fishes.  He is now an associate curator at the Royal Ontario Museum and an associate professor at the University of Toronto."

Image caption from Evolution: International Journal of Organic Revolution, Volume 67, Issue 5. Honeycutt's article was featured as the cover story and inspiration for the journal that issue.

August, 2013