| e-mail: Rich.Strauss@ttu.edu |
|
Professor: Systematics, Evolution, and Quantitative Biology
Department of
Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University
Ph.D., Ecology, The Pennsylvania State University (1980)
M.S., Ecology, The Pennsylvania State University (1975)
B.A., Biology, West Chester State University, Pennsylvania
(1970)
Research interests: The general theme of my work is quantitative morphology in the context of evolution and phylogenetics; most of my empirical studies have involved fishes and other vertebrates, the group of organisms that I know best. This theme has led to interrelated studies in the methodologies of morphometrics and phylogenetics, the importance of allometric scaling in the evolution of size and shape, the morphological structuring of communities, and the relationships between development and evolution. My primary biological research program at the present time continues to involve the changes in development (relative rates and timing) of skeletal structures that have occurred within the poeciliids, a diverse monophyletic groups of fishes, in order to assess both the ontogenetic changes associated with their diversity and the constraints on developmental variability. We have also developed a renewed interest in fish behavior, particularly (1) patterns of schooling behavior in catfishes, which school in two dimensions rather than three, and (2) the effects of inbreeding on courtship behavior and behavioral syndromes (“personalities”) in guppies.
Current graduate students:
Joseph Carmichael, Ph.D. program, "Temporal variation and taxonomy of the mite Gigantolaelaps cricetidarum on the marsh rice rat in southern Texas".
Adam Ferguson, Ph.D. program, "Geographic and genetic structure of the American hog-nosed skunk (Conepatus leuconotus)".
Kathryn Macdonald (co-advisor Dr. Robert Bradley), Ph.D. program, "Population dynamics of southern plains woodrats and associated arenaviruses".
Raquel Marchán-Rivadeneira (co-advisor: Dr. Robert Baker), Ph.D. program, "Morphological analysis of neotropical fruit-eating bats, Artibeus, from Central and South America".
Courtney Thomason (co-advisor: Dr. Amy Pedersen, University of Edinburgh), Ph.D. program, "Dynamics of co-infection of Bartonella and nematodes in Peromyscus".
Recent and future courses (see below for full list of courses taught):
Spring 2012
Applied Bayesian Analysis in Biology
Fall 2011
Applied Multivariate Statistics
Quantitative morphology (Morphometrics)
Summer 2011
Vertebrate Structure and Development
Selected publications (see link below for full list and reprint links):
Strauss, R.E. 2010. Discriminating groups of organisms. In: Morphometrics for Nonmorphometricians (E. Ashraf, ed.). Springer-Verlag.
Stennett, C.R. and R.E. Strauss. 2010. Behavioural lateralization in zebrafish and four related species of minnows (Osteichthyes: Cyprinidae). Animal Behaviour 79:1339-1342.
Higgins, C.L. and R.E. Strauss. 2008. Modeling stream-fish assemblages with niche apportionment models: patterns, processes, and scale dependence. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 137:696–706
Buchanan, B., E. Johnson, R.E. Strauss, and P.J. Lewis. 2007. A morphometric approach to assessing Late Paleoindian projectile point variability on the Southern High Plains. Plains Anthropologist 203:279–299
Strauss, R.E. and M.N. Atanassov. 2006. Determining best subsets of specimens and characters in the presence of large amounts of missing data. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 88:309–328.
Higgins, C.L., M.R. Willig, and R.E. Strauss. 2006. The role of stochastic processes in producing nested patterns of species distributions. Oikos 114:159-167.
Higgins, C.L., and R.E. Strauss. 2004. Discrimination and classification of search paths produced by search-tactic models. Behavioral Ecology 15:248–254.
Strauss, R.E. 2001. Cluster analysis and the identification
of aggregations. Animal Behaviour 61:481-488.
Strauss, R.E. 1999. Brain-tissue accumulation of fluorescent
age pigments in four poeciliid fishes (Cyprinodontiformes)
and the estimation of biological age. Growth, Development and Aging
64:149-168.
Strauss, R.E. 1993. The study of allometry since Huxley.
Introductory essay for the re-publication of: Problems of
Relative Growth, J.S. Huxley (1932), pp. 47-75. Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Bookstein, F.L., B. Chernoff, R.L. Elder, J.M.
Humphries, G.R. Smith, and R.E. Strauss. 1985.
Morphometrics in Evolutionary Biology: the Geometry of Size
and Shape Change. Special
Publication No.15, Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. 277 pp.
Links:
Course links:
Statistical Inference and Analysis
Applied Multivariate Statistics Lab
Applied Bayesian Analysis in Biology
Morphometrics (Quantitative Morphology)
Using Matlab as a Research Tool
Seminar in Phylogenetic Methods
Vertebrate Structure and Development
Natural History of the Vertebrates: the Fishes
Graduate Learning and Teaching: Using PowerPoint
Texas Tech University, Department of Biological Sciences