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职称:Professor
所属学校:Boston University
所属院系:College of Arts & Sciences
所属专业:African-American/Black Studies
联系方式:617-353-5560
Les Kaufman studies aquatic biological diversity, and the processes that create it (speciation), destroy it (extinction), and maintain it (conservation biology). His favorite workhorses are the labroids (damselfishes, cichlids, surfperches, and wrasess), a very species-rich group that includes a big chunk of the world’s lake, reef, and river fishes. His work focuses on why some organisms are more adaptable than others, and how this relates to the ways that they evolve and interact with each other. The lab is involved in two lines of basic research. First is analysis of the evolution of fish species flocks in the Great Lakes of East Africa, with a special focus on Lake Victoria. This project includes biotic survey of the headwaters of the White Nile, and laboratory studies of the morphology, ecology, and genetics of haplochromine cichlids. These are the fastest-evolving, and most rapidly disappearing fishes on earth. Second is a comparative study of skeletal plasticity in several types of fishes, including the cichlids. This work is oriented toward understanding the importance of plasticity in the wild, and the use of fishes as laboratory models for the study of human bone disease. Collectively, these studies employ a variety of methods, including morphometric and computer image analysis; comparative anatomy, kinematics, and histochemistry; field exploration and sampling; systematics; and studies of fish behavior in the laboratory. The goal of the applied research is to develop the science necessary for the conservation of aquatic biological diversity and fishery resources. Currently he is working on ways of preserving and restoring the indigenous species of tropical lakes and coral reefs. Though these systems are geographically and environmentally disparate, the human factors in all of them are very similar, chiefly; eutrophication, overexploitation, and xenobiotics. Understanding of the early life history of fishes is of universal importance in fish conservation, so current projects include a study of the demographics of nursery areas in the Georges Bank fishery, and work on the ecology of recruitment in tropical and temperate reef fishes.
