Elizabeth L. Brainerd
Ph.D., Harvard University

These are exciting times in the field of vertebrate morphology. Imaging technologies such as high-resolution CT scanning, MRI, and laser scanning confocal microscopy are opening up vast worlds of cross-sectional and three-dimensional anatomy. In functional morphology and biomechanics, new tools for micrometry, force measurement, 3D flow visualization, 3D motion capture, and mathematical modeling are providing ever more sophisticated understandings of the interactions between morphology and environment. Studies of vertebrate functional morphology, biomechanics, paleontology, and development are poised at the edge of a revolution in our ability to capture and quantify complex morphology and function in 4D (3 spatial dimensions plus time), and to integrate our understandings of function, development, and evolution. In my research program I attempt to take the broadest possible perspective on vertebrate form, function, evolution, and development. My students and I are currently working on the following projects: biomechanics of segmented axial musculature in fishes and salamanders, pennate muscle architecture, functional morphology and physiology of yawning and pandiculation, axial patterning in fishes, morphology and mechanics of fish skin, aquatic walking in fishes and amphibians, pectoral fin development in zebrafish, ontogeny of the aquatic escape response in amphibians, and neuroanatomy of the Mauthner cell system and motor control of aquatic escape responses.