Prosanta  Chakrabarty 

Professor
Curator of Ichthyology
SEE Division

Phone: 225-578-3079

E-mail: prosanta@lsu.edu
Office: 119 Foster Hall
Website:  Chakrabarty site

 

Area of Interest

Research in my lab focuses on recovering the relationships of fishes in order to better understand evolutionary processes. My research interests are currently targeting two main fields: the evolution of bioluminescent systems and historical biogeography of freshwater fishes. Bioluminescent systems have evolved multiple times in fishes, predominantly among deep-sea clades. I am particularly interested in using phylogenetic tools to better understand how sexual selection on bioluminescent structures may have played a role in speciation. My biogeographic studies have looked at how fishes with low dispersal ability (such as blind cave fishes) came to be distributed across biogeographic barriers and how the distribution of freshwater fishes explain earth history. Students interested in working in my lab will learn molecular and morphological phylogenetic techniques, how to conduct geometric morphometric analyses, and various other tools to better understand fish biology.