Alex Maile

The beauty of speciation is that it allows new species with their own unique evolutionary lineage and their own historical fate to give rise across the disparate habitats found within our biosphere. An evolutionary ichthyologist has the privilege of exploring the causes of this phenomenon while being held to the highest standard in understanding the relationships among differing species and properly designating taxonomic names to represent those relationships. My lifelong ambition accompanied by my undergraduate and graduate research, which focused on deep-sea fish evolution, has given me the opportunity to contribute to the advancement of the dynamic field of evolutionary ichthyology. I seek to join others in being held to that same standard to understand the diversification of life as we know it.