Biodiversity and Macroevolution

Faculty members and students in KU-EEB study the diversity of life on Earth—its spatial and temporal patterns; its evolutionary history; its levels of organization from genes to species to clades to ecosystems. EEB scientists document the diversity of Earth's terrestrial and marine organisms, fossil and living, through biotic surveys that span the globe and traverse geologic time; they study species origins, distributions, phylogenies, and symbioses from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.

Comprehensive research and teaching resources include DNA sequencing and computational facilities, and world-class collections of recent and fossil organisms that are housed in the closely allied KU Biodiversity Research Center. Taxonomic foci include botany, paleobotany, entomology, herpetology, ichthyology, ornithology, mammalogy, parasitology, cnidarians, and vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology.

Click here to see a list of EEB faculty who are conducting research in this area.

Prominent areas of study include:

Biodiversity informatics
Biogeography
Paleobiology
Phylogenetic theory
Speciation
Systematics