NOVELTEETH GROUP
Alexa Sadier
Principal Investigator
I am an evolutionary developmental biologist. My main interest is to understand how organisms evolve and diversify in various environments using integrative approaches. More specifically, my research aims to answers the following questions: How do novelties originate from conserved genomic and developmental programs? How do biological and developmental constraints limit or facilitate the diversification of phenotypes? How do organisms escape these constraints during adaptive radiations? To study these questions, we use the hyperdiverse radiation of bats as a model system, and more largely mammals and apply our findings to evolution of life on Earth and beyond.
Ariadna Morales
Postdoc
Ariadna is an evolutionary biologist. She studies how biological diversity is generated and the mechanisms that promote repeated adaptations. In particular, she aims to identify genomic regions linked to unique and reappearing traits. In the lab, she will be investigating the genomic and transcriptomic basis of bat tooth classes determination. Find more about her other projects here! https://ariadnamorales.info/
Marcela Herrera
Postdoc
Marcela is an evo-devo scientist interested in the evolution of developmental systems. In NOVELTEETH, she investigates the developmental basis of heterodonty by building data-driven machine learning models linking transcriptomic and morphological variation. During her previous postdoc at OIST, she was involved in building new evo-devo model systems such as clown fishes and anemonefishes.
Nathanaëlle Saclier
Postdoc
Nathanaëlle study the interaction between the evolution of biological traits, genome and the impact of the environment on these interactions. In our lab, she is studing the diversification of color vision in bats using transcriptomic and developmental approaches. Outside the lab, she is a singer and part of the ISEM band!
Fanny Gagliardi
PhD student
Fanny investigates the origin and diversification of mammalian tooth classes using morphometrics and developmental biology approaches. She is passionate about bats and will mainly focus on them before expanding to other groups.
Benoît Moison
IE / Senior Technician
Benoît studies the evolution of bat tooth shape in the adult and during development using CTscans and morphometrics. He is also in charge of maintaining our databases and collections. Outside of the lab, he is a musician playing sax.
Alumni
Pauline Rouchaud, master 1 student