Evolutionary Biology

When the Central American land bridge closed completely about three million years ago, marine species found themselves in dramatically transformed environments. The separation of the Caribbean from the Eastern Tropical Pacific and the migration of animals between North and South America is one of the great deep-time evolutionary experiments in the world. The tropics offers endless opportunities to study biodiverse genomes and phenotypes: Heliconius butterfly speciation, the co-evolution of mutualisms on land and sea, the impact of human hunting on speciation and countless more examples of evolution.