Brian Sidlauskas

As an evolutionary ichthyologist and systematist, I work to understand the diversification of fishes and to help conserve their diversity for future generations.  To advance that understanding, my lab uses anatomical, genetic and theoretical techniques such as geometric morphometrics, phylogenetics, comparative anatomy, population genetics, phylogeography, and phylogenetic comparative methods. Most of my research centers on specimens preserved in the world’s network of natural history collections, and I have been involved in the curation, care and building of such collections since my undergraduate days at Cornell University.  Since then, I have held posts as a graduate student researcher at the Chicago’s Field Museum, a research associate at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and curator at the Oregon State Ichthyology Collection.  After fifteen years as a professor in Oregon State University’s Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Sciences, I joined Tulane University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in 2024.  In addition to my role as a professor, I serve as the director of the Tulane University Biodiversity Research Institute, curator of the Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection, which holds eight million preserved specimens and is the largest collection of preserved post-larval fishes in the world, and the chair of the School of Science and Engineering’s Undergraduate Research for All Task Force. 

Though I’ve researched many different fishes over the course of my career, I am best known for my phylogenetic, taxonomic and evolutionary studies of the headstanding fishes in the South American family Anostomidae, a radiation of 150 species with dazzling diversity in color pattern, mouth position and dentition. Recently, two colleagues from Brazil named a newly discovered species of anostomid fish in my honor. I have also described new species from central Africa, South America and the North Pacific, helped to reconstruct the most detailed tree-of-life ever for the more than 2000 species in the order Characiformes (which includes pirahnas and neon tetras), studied the potential effects of dam construction on fish diversity in Gabon, and pioneered an evolutionary visualization technique known a phylomorphospace.  My collaborative forays into fish paleontology have attracted substantial media attention, such as the discovery that a species described originally as a lemur without a nose is actually a fish, or a paper demonstrating the largest salmon to ever live had a pair of giant teeth that stuck out laterally from the side of its head, reminiscent of a warthog.

I’ve also engaged substantially with teaching over my career and have published on approaches to bringing specimen-based education online.  I received the award for Meritorious Teaching from the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and the American Elasmobranch Society in 2020, and Oregon State University recognized me with the R.M. Wade Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2018 and by naming me Undergraduate Mentor of the Year in 2014.