Catherine L. Peichel

Convergent genome streamlining accompanies independent miniaturization in the world’s smallest fishes

Miniaturization, the reduction of adult body size to an extreme degree, has evolved repeatedly across vertebrates. Yet its genomic underpinnings remain poorly understood. Cypriniformes, the most species-rich order of freshwater fishes, contains multiple miniaturized lineages that...

Lake size is associated with the relationship between body mass and gut microbiota alpha diversity in threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus)

Lake size is associated with ecological conditions that can affect the microbiome of hosts, such as diet and habitat characteristics. However, whether host-microbe interactions are affected by lake size remains poorly understood. We characterized the gut microbiota of 191 wild th...

Disentangling unique site-specific and shared habitat-level adaptation in a classic system of repeated evolution

Repeated divergence across contrasting habitats is widely used to infer natural selection and adaptation. Such comparative inferences, however, remain inherently correlative and capture only adaptation shared among populations from the same habitat type, thereby missing site-spec...