Mike Burns
Postdoctoral Fellow
I study how and why distantly related fishes have evolved to look very similar to one another. Specifically, I am looking at whether natural selection has caused South American and African freshwater fishes to evolve similar body shapes.
Recent Publications
Melo, B. F., B. L. Sidlauskas, T. J. Near, F. F. Roxo, A. Ghezelayagh, L. E. Ochoa, M. L. J. Stiassny, J. Arroyave, J. Chang, B. C. Faircloth, D. J. MacGuigan, et al. (2021). Accelerated Diversification Explains the Exceptional Species Richness of Tropical Characoid Fishes. Systematic Biology:syab040.
Sidlauskas, B. L., M. D. Burns, T. J. Buser, N. Harper, and M. Kindred (2021). Teaching Ichthyology Online with a Virtual Specimen Collection. Ichthyology & Herpetology 109.
Egan, J. P., T. J. Buser, M. D. Burns, A. M. Simons, and P. J. Hundt (2021). Patterns of Body Shape Diversity and Evolution in Intertidal and Subtidal Lineages of Combtooth Blennies (Blenniidae). Integrative Organismal Biology 3:obab004.
Burns, M. D. (2021). Adaptation to herbivory and detritivory drives the convergent evolution of large abdominal cavities in a diverse freshwater fish radiation (Otophysi: Characiformes). Evolution 75:688–705.
Faircloth, B. C., F. Alda, K. Hoekzema, M. D. Burns, C. Oliveira, J. S. Albert, B. F. Melo, L. E. Ochoa, F. F. Roxo, P. Chakrabarty, B. L. Sidlauskas, and M. E. Alfaro (2020). A target enrichment bait set for studying relationships among Ostariophysan fishes. Copeia 108:47.
Kolmann, M. A., M. D. Burns, J. Y. K. Ng, N. R. Lovejoy, and D. D. Bloom (2020). Habitat transitions alter the adaptive landscape and shape phenotypic evolution in needlefishes (Belonidae). Ecology and Evolution 10:3769–3783.
