Thomas Near

About

Professor Thomas Near leads the Near Lab at Yale University and the Peabody Museum, focusing on the integrative natural history, phylogeny, and organismal biology of fishes. His research aims to discover the mechanisms that generate biodiversity by using phylogenies, or evolutionary trees, inferred from DNA sequence data. This approach allows him to investigate speciation, historical biogeography, and the timing of lineage diversification. A significant aspect of his work involves the discovery of biodiversity through the description of new species. The lab primarily studies ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii), which comprise nearly half of all living vertebrates. By reconstructing phylogenetic relationships using genomic information from these vertebrates, Professor Near's research explores patterns and mechanisms of diversification, reconstructs historical biogeography, and estimates evolutionary timescales. His work spans systematics, speciation mechanisms, and phylogenetics, contributing to a deeper understanding of the origins and evolution of Earth's rich biota.

Research topics

• Biology
• Computer Science
• Business
• Paleontology
• Fishery
• Evolutionary biology
• Computational biology
• Genetics
• Anatomy
• Earth science

Selected publications

• Prolonged morphological expansion of spiny-rayed fishes following the end-Cretaceous

  Nature Ecology & Evolution · 2022 · 116 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Initial data release and announcement of the 10,000 Fish Genomes Project (Fish10K)

  GigaScience · 2020 · 99 citations

  BACKGROUND: With more than 30,000 species, fish-including bony, jawless, and cartilaginous fish-are the largest vertebrate group, and include some of the earliest vertebrates. Despite their critical roles in many ecosystems and human society, fish genomics lags behind work on birds and mammals. This severely limits our understanding of evolution and hinders progress on the conservation and sustainable utilization of fish. RESULTS: Here, we announce the Fish10K project, a portion of the Earth Bio…

  DOI

• Accelerated Diversification Explains the Exceptional Species Richness of Tropical Characoid Fishes

  Systematic Biology · 2021 · 87 citations

  The Neotropics harbor the most species-rich freshwater fish fauna on the planet, but the timing of that exceptional diversification remains unclear. Did the Neotropics accumulate species steadily throughout their long history, or attain their remarkable diversity recently? Biologists have long debated the relative support for these museum and cradle hypotheses, but few phylogenies of megadiverse tropical clades have included sufficient taxa to distinguish between them. We used 1288 ultraconserve…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Erosion of heterogeneous rock drives diversification of Appalachian fishes

  Science · 2023 · 47 citations

  was more widespread, but as erosion exposed other rock types, lineages of this species were progressively isolated in tributaries farther upstream, where metamorphic rock remained. Our results suggest a geologic mechanism for initiating allopatric diversification in mountains long after tectonic activity ceases.

  PublisherDOI

• Phylogenomics establishes an Early Miocene reconstruction of reef vertebrate diversity

  Science Advances · 2025-05-07 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Oceans blanket more than two-thirds of Earth’s surface, yet marine biodiversity is disproportionately concentrated in coral reefs. Investigating the origins of this exceptional diversity is crucial for predicting how reefs will respond to anthropogenic disturbances. Here, we use a genome-scale dataset to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the wrasses and parrotfishes ( Labridae ), which rank among the most species-rich and ecologically diverse lineages of reef fishes. We show that major lab…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Genomic Approaches to Resolving Phylogenies of Antarctic Notothenioid Fishes

  NSF · $491k · 2009–2013

• Collaborative Research: Causes and Consequences of Exceptional Diversity in Spiny-Rayed Fishes

  NSF · $304k · 2011–2015

• DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Linking population genetic patterns of introgressive hybridization to the breakdown of reproductive barriers in Darters (Percidae)

  NSF · $13k · 2010–2013

Frequent coauthors

• Brant C. Faircloth

  Louisiana State University

  797 shared

• Brian C. O’Meara

  757 shared

• Luke J. Harmon

  University of Idaho

  756 shared

• H. Bradley Shaffer

  California Department of Conservation

  755 shared

• John Trueman

  Australian National University

  754 shared

• Felipe Zapata

  754 shared

• Jonathan C. Banks

  Cawthron Institute

  754 shared

• Shannon Straub

  754 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Ecology, Ethology, and Evolution

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  2000

• M.S., Biological Sciences

  Northern Illinois University

  1995

• B.A., History

  Northern Illinois University

  1993

• B.S., Biological Science

  Northern Illinois University

  1993

Similar researchers at Yale University

• Walter Jetzh-111
• Richard Prumh-82
• Erika Edwardsh-70