Queens College

Office: NSB E-114 Tel: (718) 997-3447; Laboratory: NSB E-321 Tel: (718) 997-3415

E-mail: michael.hickerson @ qc.cuny.edu

Research: Comparative Phylogeography of North Atlantic Diadromous fishes. Biogeography of Holarctic smelt. Katriina got her PhD from UBC (E. Taylor's lab)

Research: Island Biogeography of small mammals (Lake islands of Minnesota and mountain islands of Malawi)

Research: Phylogeography of Hippocampus erectus and other Syngnathids. J.T. is co-advised by John Waldman and also works at the River Project

Research: Developing software tools for HABC (msBayes). Wen has expanded msBayes to include Shannon's Index (as suggested by Sherwin et al. 2006)

I am generally interested in uncovering processes behind biogeographic shifts, speciation, extinction and determinants of community assembly. I am specifically interested in the processes regarding the distributions and genetic structuring of temperate intertidal organisms. I am also involved in “statistical phylogeographic” modeling to quantify the degree of biogeographic concordance across multiple co-distributed species. To this end, I am developing an inferential framework based on hierarchical approximate Bayesian computation (HABC) called (msBayes). The goal of msBayes is to be a toolbox for evaluating a broad range of complex historical scenarios.

1. Estimating the geographic history of all species within a community from “whole ecosystem” phylogeographic data to address fundamental questions about the determinants and dynamics of community assembly and the historically geographic nature of species diversity. This will involve developing HABC models to test controversial and unresolved hypotheses of community assembly such as the equilibrium theory of island biogeography, the neutral theory, the stochastic competitive assembly model, and theory of niche assembly rules.

4. Using phylogeographic inferences to understand historical range fluctuations and population genetic structuring in temperate near-shore fishes

5. Joint dynamics of speciation and genetic thresholds for species delineation and discovery (DNA-barcoding). I have been using joint simulations to explore the potential accuracy of single-gene "DNA-barcode" thresholds. Specifically, we are investigating their potential accuracy when they are used to "discover" animal species that become reproductively isolated under some simple Bateson-Dobzhansky-Muller models and how well these thresholds do with empirical data. We are also coming up with a way to quantify uncertainty when using DNA-barcodes for species discovery.

2008 Riddle, B.R. M.N. Dawson, E.A. Hadley, D.J.Hafner, M.J. Hickerson, S.J. Mantooth, and A.D. Yoder. The role of molecular genetics in sculpting the future of integrative biogeography. Progress in Physical Geography. In press

2007 Rosenblum, E., M.J. Hickerson, and C. Moritz. A multilocus perspective on colonization accompanied by selection and gene flow. Evolution. 61: 2917-2985

2007 A. Leaché, S.A. Crews and M.J. Hickerson.Two waves of diversification in mammals and reptiles of Baja California revealed by hierarchical Bayesian analysis. Biology Letters. 3:646-650

2007 Hickerson, M.J., E. Stahl, and N. Takebayashi. msBayes: A flexible pipeline for comparative phylogeographic inference using approximate Bayesian computation (ABC). BMC Bioinformatics. 8:268. pdf

2006. Hickerson, M.J., E, Stahl, and H.A. Lessios. Test for simultaneous divergence using approximate Bayesian computation. Evolution 60: 2435-2453. pdf

2006 Stoeck, M, C. Moritz, M.J. Hickerson, D. Frynta, T. Dujsebayeva, V. Eremchenko, J. R. Macey, T. Papenfuss, and D. Wake. Evolution of mitochondrial relationships and biogeography of palearctic green toads (Bufo viridis subgroup) with insights into their genomic plasticity. Mol. Phy. Evol. 41:663-689

2006. Hickerson, M.J., C. W. Cunningham. Nearshore fish (Pholis gunnellus) persists across the North Atlantic through multiple glacial episodes. Molecular Ecology 15: 4095-4107. pdf

2006. Hickerson, M.J., C. Meyer, and C. Moritz. DNA-barcoding will fail to discover new animal species over broad parameter space. Systematic Biology 55:729-739. pdf

2006. Hickerson, M.J., G. Dolman, and C. Moritz. Phylogeographic summary statistics for testing simultaneous vicariance. Molecular Ecology 15: 209-23. pdf

2005. Hickerson M.J. C. W. Cunningham. Contrasting Quaternary histories in an ecologically divergent pair of low-dispersing intertidal fish (Xiphister) revealed by multi-locus DNA analysis. Evolution 59: 344-360. pdf

2004. Riginos, C., M.J. Hickerson, C. Henzler, and C. W. Cunningham. Differential patterns of male and female trans-Atlantic gene flow in the blue mussel, Mytilus edulis. Evolution 58: 2438-2451.

2004. Satta, Y., M.J. Hickerson, H. Watanabe, C.O. O’hUigin, and J. Klein. Ancestral population sizes and species divergence times in the primate lineage on the basis of intron BAC end sequences. Journal of Molecular Evolution 59: 478-487

2003. Hickerson, M.J., M. Gilchrist, and N. Takebayashi. Calibrating a molecular clock from Phylogeographic data: moments and likelihood estimators. Evolution 57: 2216-2225. pdf

2001. Hickerson, M.J., and J. R. P. Ross. Post-glacial population history and genetic structure of the northern clingfish (Gobbiesox maeandricus), revealed from mtDNA analysis. Marine Biology 138: 407-419. pdf

2000 Hickerson, M.J., and C. W. Cunningham. Dramatic mitochondrial gene rearrangements in the hermit crab Pagurus longicarpus (Crustacea, Anomura). Molecular Biology and Evolution 17: 639-644. pdf

List of Publications from PubMed


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Dr. Mike Hickerson