Stanley Somogyi

PhD thesis:

Investigating the macroevolutionary consequences of population-level polymorphism among rapidly radiating vertebrate clades.

Research interests:

1. Understanding the origins of living biodiversity, with a desire to better understand large-scale macroevolutionary patterns.
2. Challenging evolutionary questions, particularly those spanning multiple vertebrate clades and involving rapid radiations, unresolved polytomies, and conflicting sources of evidence.
3. Understanding how microevolutionary processes leave lasting signatures on macroevolutionary trends.
4. The conflation of convergent evolution and hemiplasy.

In recent years, neoavian birds, placental mammals, and teleost fishes have all been recognised to have undergone extremely rapid radiations in the aftermath of the K–Pg mass extinction. Molecular phylogenetics have improved our understanding of evolutionary relationships within these clades; nevertheless, all three exhibit recalcitrant nodes that resist resolution, likely due to conflicting gene trees generated by extensive incomplete lineage sorting.

The rise of molecular phylogenetics has left morphological phylogenetics—and, importantly, the macroevolutionary consequences of population-level processes such as ancestral polymorphism—underexplored, despite implications for phenotypic evolution in vertebrates. For instance, ancestral polymorphism can give rise to ‘hemiplastic’ character distributions that misleadingly resemble convergent acquisitions.

This PhD will integrate macroevolutionary modelling, direct palaeontological investigations, and developmental insights to better understand the factors influencing the dynamics of phenotypic polymorphisms over macroevolutionary timescales. This will clarify how episodes of phenotypic incomplete lineage sorting have influenced our understanding of vertebrate evolution.

Who or what inspired you to pursue your research interests?

There are several people who have inspired me to pursue my research interests. As a child my grandparents took me birdwatching and fishing which ignited an interest in the natural world around me, particularly with regards to birds, fish, and other vertebrates. As well as this, a significant consumption of wildlife media – both documentaries and fiction – further inspired an interest in nature, and more specifically how organisms have evolved over the past 3.5 billion years or more. Nowadays I am able to enjoy these interests through both my research and in my own time.