Adaptation to urban living in fishes

The scaliest New Yorkers have evolved in various ways to cope with the stresses of city life. These urban fish can tolerate pollution and bacterial loads that their country cousins cannot, including massive fluctuations in temperature, oxygen and extreme levels of organic pollutants and heavy metals. What are the genomic changes that allow them to persist in NYC’s challenging waterways?
Our location in New York City presents many opportunities to study the intensive selective pressures of an urban environment on marine and estuarine organisms. We are studying the genome and gut microbiome of a ubiquitous estuarine fish, the Atlantic killifish or mummichog (Fundulus heteroclitus) to better understand how organisms are able to adapt at the genomic and metagenomic level to these extreme conditions.

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Other Projects

Diversification in rockfishes (Sebastes spp): ecological and evolutionary genomics

Understanding the evolutionary mechanisms that generate biodiversity is crucial for conserving species – however, we lack a thorough understanding o...

Evolution, population genetics and speciation in African freshwater fishes

We study the origins of fish diversity in African rivers and lakes, with a current focus on some of the most extreme aquatic environments found on th...

eDNA to assess aquatic diversity

Species monitoring is extremely important to designing management strategies for protecting biodiversity, but traditional survey methods are often ex...

Marine mammal ecology and evolution

We use modern and ancient DNA to explore how whale and other marine megafauna have responded to climatic changes in the past and whaling. This work is...

The Alter Lab Dr. Elizabeth Alter

Marine Evolutionary and Ecological Genetics

California State University Monterey Bay — Biology and Chemistry Department