Keith Bayha
Post-doctoral Scholar

I am interested in the molecular systematics, phylogeography, population genetics and invasion genetics of scyphozoan jellyfish and ctenophores. I am working on the NSF funded REVSYS project (a collaboration between the Dawson Lab and Allen Collins at the Smithsonian Institution) examining the phylogenetic relationships, both molecular and morphological, among the semaeostome jellyfish (Cnidaria: Scyphozoa), a group that includes moon jellies, sea nettles and the lion’s mane jellyfish of Sherlock Holmes' fame. Although these jellyfish cause extensive problems worldwide as blooming and invasive species, taxonomic knowledge of this group (as is true of jellyfish in general) is relatively poor. By combining morphological and genetic data, we will greatly contribute to knowledge of species diversity within the group, morphological characters that delineate species and evolutionary relationships among species.

I'm an evolutionary ecologist, and most of my research focuses on the interplay between ecological genetics (e.g. local adaptation, rates of inbreeding) and the distributions of marine 'plants', mostly macroalgae and seagrasses. In the Dawson lab, I am contributing to a multicampus collaboration with University of California PIs Mike Dawson, Rick Grosberg, Pete Raimondi, Brian Gaylord and John Largier funded by the University of California's Coastal Environmental Quality Initiative. The goal of this project is to begin to explore the links between (1) community characteristics such as species diversity, abundance patterns, and similarity in composition across sites, (2) population genetic characteristics, including genetic diversity, patterns of allelic richness, and genetic structure across sites, of common invertebrate and algal species found in rocky intertidal habitats along the California coastline, and to examine those links in light of (3) the nearshore physical oceanography of this region and hypothesized patterns of connectivity among sites.