Because I wanted to take the findings in my dissertation to the next step. The dissertation examined how germ cells behaved in one animal. At Cambridge, I asked how germ cells behaved in all animals and how they evolved. To do that, I studied sea urchins, crustaceans and sea anemones in the lab. Then I read the historic literature, just about everything published on the germ cells of hundreds of different species.<\/p>\n

Throughout my career, I\u2019ve tried to build on previous findings, and that sometimes means going outside of the original discipline or stretching its definitions. Right now, in my lab, we\u2019re trying to understand the evolution of development by considering more than genes.<\/p>\n

We are incorporating ecology and environment into our studies. Instead of just studying fruit flies in isolation, we are looking at the microbes that live inside the flies and the plants that the flies feed on. With this work, we hope to understand how the developmental processes can evolve in real-life environments.<\/p>\n