Daniel Rabosky

Daniel Rabosky is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan, where he also serves as Curator at the Museum of Zoology. His research program spans macroevolution, speciation dynamics, and phylogenetic comparative methods, with particular expertise in Australian reptiles and squamate evolution. Rabosky maintains an active laboratory and is currently seeking new graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to join his research team.

Rabosky's research interests focus on macroevolutionary patterns and processes, particularly the connections between microevolutionary dynamics and large-scale biodiversity patterns. His work integrates phylogenetic comparative methods with ecological and morphological data to understand speciation processes, adaptive radiations, and the evolutionary dynamics of reptile communities, especially Australian skinks. He has made significant contributions to methodological developments in evolutionary biology through software tools like BAMM (Bayesian Analysis of Macroevolutionary Mixtures) and BAMMtools for analyzing evolutionary rate heterogeneity across phylogenetic trees.

Analysis of Rabosky's recent publication record reveals a strong focus on evolutionary theory, methodological development, and empirical studies of reptile diversification. His work spans theoretical macroevolution, phylogenetic comparative methods, Australian herpetology, and the connections between population-level processes and macroevolutionary patterns. The research demonstrates increasing integration of genomic data with traditional morphological and ecological approaches, reflecting broader trends in evolutionary biology.

Rabosky actively mentors graduate students including Matheus Januário and Tristan Schramer, and supervises postdoctoral fellows Michael Harvey, Jonathan Mitchell, Sonal Singhal, and Rudolf von May. His laboratory receives research funding supporting multiple projects in macroevolutionary dynamics, with recent grants likely supporting work on the connections between metapopulation ecology and speciation rates, as evidenced by his 2025 Ecology Letters paper.

The Rabosky Lab maintains a strong presence in both theoretical and empirical evolutionary biology, with particular strengths in phylogenetic methods development, squamate reptile evolution, and the interface between micro- and macroevolution. The lab actively collaborates with researchers across institutions and contributes to major initiatives like the openVertebrate project for 3D imaging of museum specimens.