Schaefer Lab

[Schaefer Lab Research] [USM Museum of Ichthyology] [Courses] [C.V.] [Other Links] 

Research

One of the greatest challenges in biology is to explain observed levels and patterns of species diversity. My research focuses on pieces of this puzzle on a variety of organizational levels from the physiology of individuals to the large scale temporal and spatial dynamics of assemblages. I use freshwater fishes as model organisms to address some of these problems. Much of my recent work has focused on fishes in the Fundulus notatus species complex. The three described species in this group are ecologically and morphologically very similar and abundant throughout the Mississippi basin and Gulf of Mexico drainages from the Florida panhandle to southeastern Texas. The two most widely distributed members of this complex, F. notatus and F. olivaceus, occur throughout much of that area while F. euryzonus is endemic to the Lake Pontchartrain drainage. The species co-occur and hybridize in numerous contact zones. These contact zones are ecological and evolutionary replicates where species boundaries are in the process of forming. This makes them ideal for addressing some basic questions.



Fundulus olivaceus
Sampling Fundulus sp. in the Glover River, Oklahoma.

Selected Recent Publications

    For a complete list, see my C.V.

  • Aldridge, P., Gutierrez, M., Schaefer, J.F., Duvernell, D., Matamoros, W.A., Brunkow, P.B. 2011. Variability in movement dynamics of Fundulus notatus and F. olivaceus populations. In press, Ecology of Freshwater Fish.

  • Schaefer, J., D. Duvernell and B. Kreiser. 2011. Shape variability in topminnows (Fundulus notatus species complex) along the river continuum. In press, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.

  • Schaefer, J.F., D. Duvernell and B. R. Kreiser. 2011. Ecological and genetic assessment of spatial structure among replicate contact zones between two topminnow species. Evolutionary Ecology DOI: 10.1007/s10682-011-9461-2

  • Schaefer, J.F. and Walters, A. 2010. Metabolic cold adaptation and developmental plasticity in metabolic rates among species in the Fundulus notatus species complex. Functional Ecology 24: 1087-1094.

  • Mickle, P., J.F. Schaefer, S.B. Adams and B.R. Kreiser. 2010. Habitat use of age 0 Alabama shad in the Pascagoula river drainage, USA. Ecology of Freshwater Fish 19: 107-115.

  • Matamoros, W.A., J.F. Schaefer and B. R. Kreiser. 2009. Annotated checklist of the freshwater fishes that occur in continental and insular Honduras. Zootaxa 2307: 1-38.

  • Schaefer, J.F., B.K. Kresier, P. Mickle, C. Champagne and D. Duvernell. 2009. Patterns of co-existence and hybridization among two topminnows (Fundulus euryzonus and F. olivaceus) in a riverine contact zone. Ecology of Freshwater Fish 18:360-368.

  • Gido, K.B., J.F. Schaefer and J.A. Falke. 2009. Convergence of littoral zone fish communities in reservoirs.Freshwater Biology 54: 1163-1177.


USM Museum of Ichthyology

The USM Museum of Ichthyology is an invaluable resource for students and researchers interested in ichthyology. The museum currently contains more than 34,000 lots and 600,000 specimens representing over 800 taxa. While most of the collection contains fishes from the southeastern US, efforts are underway to add a number of unique collections from Honduras.

See the collection page for more deatils and for searching the database.

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Current and Former Graduate Students