EEB graduate students Kevin Bakker and Andréa Thomaz have been selected to receive the prestigious Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship for the 2016 – 2017 academic year. The fellowship supports outstanding doctoral students who have achieved candidacy and are actively working on dissertation research and writing. Bakker’s advisor is Professor Tim James. Thomaz’s advisor is Professor Lacey Knowles....

"Multiple processes that result in similar patterns confound the underlying mechanisms promoting genetic variation in riverine fishes," said Thomaz. "For example, geographic barriers, constraints imposed by physical properties of a river and species ecological requirements affect the dispersal of organisms and, consequently, the genetic differentiation among populations. My Ph.D. dissertation is a step towards addressing this issue by disentangling the effect of these three processes on patterns of genetic structure of freshwater fishes in a system of drainages along the Atlantic coast of Brazil. By using new sequencing technologies and hypotheses testing statistical approaches I’m able to understand the processes responsible for generating the high species diversity and strong genetic structure observed among populations of fishes in the region. This approach also provides insights into which river portions are critical to conservation efforts because of their impact in population persistence and movement patterns of organisms living in these environments."