University of Michigan
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

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Paul Dunlap

Paul Dunlap

  • Professor
  • Ph.D., Biology, University of California at Los Angeles, 1984
  • Dunlap Lab

Contact information

  • University of Michigan
    1015 Kraus Natural Science Building
    830 North University
    Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1048
  • Phone: (734) 615-9099
  • Fax: (734) 763-0544
  • Email: pvdunlap@umich.edu

Research interests

My research group studies the evolutionary ecology of specific pairwise mutualisms between marine teleost fish and light-emitting bacteria. We are interested primarily in the genetic, developmental, and ecological processes and mechanisms involved in symbiont acquisition and specificity, the nature and evolutionary consequences of host – symbiont genetic integration, and the influence of symbiosis in shaping the population genetic structure of host and symbiont. Our work is necessarily interdisciplinary and uses concepts and methods from a diversity of scientific areas in a combination of laboratory, computer-based, and field research studies. Our laboratory and computer-based work is carried out primarily at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Field study sites for current research projects include the coral reefs of Okinawa and near-shore and deep-sea habitats of Suruga Bay.