Dr. Peter Berendzen

My research interests focus on the evolutionary relationships, speciation, and biogeography of fish. Fish are fascinating because of their great morphological, physiological and behavioral variation and high diversity, with over 25,000 described species. The goals of my research address two main questions on the evolution of fish: 1) What are the historical processes that have shaped geographical distributions of fish? and 2) What are the patterns of variation of specific character traits within evolutionary lineages of fish? My research involves both active field collection of fish and laboratory work on the collection of molecular and morphological data. My primary focus is on North American freshwater fish although I also have interests in flatfish and East African freshwater fish.