Lab Members

Come Join us!
Opportunities are open for students and postdocs enthusiastic about biological evolution, including bachelors projects (Iniciação Científica), master's, PhD and post doc for various starting dates. If you're interested, write an email to fhenning @ acd . ufrj . br (remove spaces). Make sure to state what interests you and tell me something about your background
Principal investigator
Undergrad student
Fernanda Hirahara
Undergrad student
José Oliveira
Master's student investigating gene expression differences related to hypertrophied lips in Crenicichla cichlids
PhD candidate investigating trophic niche specialization in Crenicichla for her pre-project.
PhD student at the CONICET program in Argentina looking at the genetic basis of hypertrophied lips and genome evolution in Crenicichla
Post-doc. Population genomics and sexual selection in Atolopus manauensis frogs
Rafael Jorge



Former Members
M.Sc. 2023-2025 - Evolution of vision and retinal gene expression in Crenicichla
Ananda D'Elia
Graciane Rocha
MSc. Molecular identification of crab cake components (i.e. "casquinhas de siri") through amplicon-seq
PhD, 2020-2024. Camila's project involved building a draft reference and investigating sex determination in Neotropical cichlids
Camila Nacif
Letícia Soares
MSc, 2021-2023. Leticia investigated the genetic basis of a color polymorphism in oysters
MSc, 2022-2023. Natália developed a paedagogical game focusing on the evolution of human pigmentation for the national graduate program for biology teachers (PROFBIO).
Natália Costa
MSc, 2019-2021.Marcela investigated fraudulent commercialization of elasmobranchs using DNA barcoding
Marcela Alvarenga