All kinds of animals have been my greatest interest as long as I remember. I am immensely fascinated by all aspects of animal life from molecules to ecosystems. That is, why I am glad to be a member of Fish Evolution Research Group. Sturgeons and catfishes are fish lineages I focused on in my PhD study. Both these fish orders contain big and charismatic species. In spite of that, they are largely understudied and much less understood than large and attractive terrestrial vertebrates.

Fish sensory systems evolution is a pivotal theme of our group. I investigate vision evolution in sturgeons and catfishes, especially its molecular essence but not only that. Primarily I analyze genome data and study opsin genes expression, but I inspect retina morphology as well. Sturgeons are ancient fish lineage, their genomes got through several polyploidization events during their evolutionary history. But still no one knows how those occurrences modulated vision evolution in this curious fish group. Catfishes keep their enigmatic nature. If anything, their diversity is far to be fully understood. Their sensory systems and their evolution are almost terra incognita. Nevertheless catfishes are known to inhabit broad ecosystem spectrum, from mountain streams to muddy lowland rivers or even cave waters. It promises revelation of manifold vision receptor modifications and even more interesting evolutionary story behind them.

Publications:

Lupše, N., Kłodawska, M., Truhlářová, V., Košátko, P., Kašpar, V., Nyom, A. R. B., & Musilova, Z. (2022). Developmental changes of opsin gene expression in ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii). Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 289(1986), 20221855.