Staff Spotlight
Dr. David L. Reed
Assistant Curator of Mammals
350 Dickinson Hall
Museum Road & Newell Drive
Gainesville, FL 32611
Voice: (352) 273-1971
Fax: (352) 846-0287
Email: dreed@flmnh.ufl.edu
Ph.D. Louisiana State University 2000
Research Interests
My laboratory uses phylogenetic and cophylogenetic methods to study the ecology and evolutionary history of hosts and parasites, primarily mammals and their parasitic lice. For example, we are interested in ecological factors that govern the ability of host-specific parasites to disperse and establish on new host species, such as host size, phylogenetic relatedness, geographic proximity, and host defense. In addition, we study the evolutionary history of parasites in order to infer host evolutionary history. We recently showed that parasitic lice make an excellent marker for inferring primate and human evolutionary history. In fact, the parasite data suggested events in human evolutionary history that human fossil and DNA sequence data have failed to record. Lastly, we are involved with developing a specimen-based database (called BioCorder) for tracking specimens, DNA sequence data, images, GIS data, etc. Please go to the Reed Lab Web Site for more information.
Courses Taught
Methods of Phylogenetic Inference, Fall 2005
Mammalogy, Fall 2006
Graduate Students
Julie Allen
Email: juliema - add "@zoo.ufl.edu" for full address
- Julie uses evolutionary genetics to investigate patterns of host/parasite coevolution.
Staff
Candace McCaffery - Mammals Collection Manager
Laurie Wilkins - Mammals Collection Manager
Representative Publications
Reed, D. L., V. S. Smith, A. R. Rogers, S. Hammond, and D. H. Clayton.2004. Molecular genetic analysis of human lice supports direct contact between modern and archaic humans. Public Library of Science, Biology. 2(11):xxx-xxx.
Cummings, M. P., and S. A. Handley, D. S. Myers, D. L. Reed, A. Rokas,and K. Winka. 2003. Comparing bootstrap and posterior probability values in the four taxon case. Systematic Biology 53(4):477-487.
Hafner, M. S., J.W. Demastes, T. A. Spradling, and D. L. Reed. 2003. Cophylogeny between pocket gophers and chewing lice. In Tangled trees: phylogenies, cospeciation and coevolution, (R. D. M. Page, ed.). University of Chicago Press, pp195-220
Reed, D. L. and M. S. Hafner. 2002. Phylogenetic analysis of bacterial communities associated with ectoparasitic chewing lice of pocket gophers: A culture-independent approach. Microbial Ecology. 44(1):78-93.
Demastes, J. W., T. A. Spradling, M. S. Hafner, and D. L. Reed. 2002. Systematics and phylogeography of pocket gophers in the genera Cratogeomys and Pappogeomys. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 22(1):144-154.