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What is the context of this research?

I’ve studied mammalian development for the past seven years. When I began my doctoral work at Harvard University in 2012, I focused on Neotropical leaf-nosed bats, whose spectacular facial diversity evolved alongside specializations to diets that include insects, fruit, nectar, fish, meat, and even blood. There is no doubt these mammals are incredible and we know very little about how they evolved such a range of faces! We know how mammalian faces develop from comparative work on laboratory mouse strains, but we don’t know how nature has changed the developmental genetics across species.

What is the significance of this project?

The vampire bat has no other vertebrate equivalent. By characterizing gene expression across facial development, we can directly observe how one of the most fascinating and mysterious animals changes its face. This data will also be included in a larger dataset examining species-specific gene expression patterns in other Neotropical leaf-nosed bats, the most ecologically diverse group of mammals. By collecting and comparing transcriptomes from one anatomical region in different species across several equivalent time points, we can gain a deeper understanding of what constitutes a mammal face, and how changes in gene activity contribute to the evolution of vampires and other dietary specialists.

What are the goals of the project?

We will generate a high-quality reference transcriptome by alignment of reads to a reference genome. With the alignment, we will investigate facial development in vampire bats by mapping RNA sequence reads to the reference transcriptome. We will use the data to identify tissue specific gene expression patterns, gene expression during formation of specialized structures, and finally vampire-specific gene expression patterns.