Rony Huys

Summary

I am a Principal researcher at The Natural History Museum, London and currently President of the World Association of Copepodologists (WAC).

Copepods are the dominant metazoan group in the marine plankton, are extremely abundant in marine and freshwater sediments and are parasites on virtually every phylum of animals from sponges to chordates.

The main theme of my research is the systematics and comparative anatomy of free-living and parasitic copepods, and the application of phylogenetic reconstruction to examine their evolution and ecological radiation, using morphology and molecular markers. Copepods are one of the best models to study fundamental phenomena like the evolution of parasitism and the marine-freshwater transition, and to test fundamental hypotheses such as the claim of oligomerization being the predominant mode of character transformation in Crustacea, and the enemy release hypothesis in invasion ecology.

I have also developed an interest in examining the relationships of lesser known and molecularly under sampled crustacean lineages such as the Mystacocarida, Pentastomida, Branchiura and Tantulocarida.

Molecular Biology Taxonomy Zoology