University of Michigan
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

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Fields of study

Invertebrate evolution and systematics, malacology

Academic background

Diarmaid Ó Foighil obtained a B.Sc. (hons) in zoology from NUI Galway (Ireland) in 1981 and a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Victoria (Canada) in 1987. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Friday Harbor Laboratories (University of Washington); Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, B.C.); and a research scientist at the University of South Carolina prior to joining the faculty at the University of Michigan in 1995. He has served as the president of the American Malacological Society and on the editorial boards of Evolution and Malacologia.

Graduate students

Celia Churchill, Jingchun Li, Cindy Bick

U-M Museum of Zoology, Mollusk Division

UM affiliation

• Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
• Museum of Zoology

"Females floated first in bubble-rafting snails"
It's "Waterworld" snail style: ocean-dwelling snails that spend most of their lives floating upside down, attached to rafts of mucus bubbles. Scientists have known about the snails' peculiar lifestyle since the 1600s, but they've wondered how the rafting habit evolved. What, exactly, were the step-by-step adaptations along the way?

Graduate student Celia Churchill and Diarmaid Ó Foighil believe they've found the answer to that intriguing question. In a cover story published in the Oct. 11 issue of Current Biology, they show that bubble rafting evolved by way of modified egg masses.