Biology

Assistant Professor

Contact

Email: kcarleto@umd.edu

Office Phone: 301.405.6929

Lab: 301.405.8121

Fax: 301.314.9358

Office Address: 2130 Bioscience Research Building

URL: http://cichlid.umd.edu/cichlidlabs/kc/carletonlab.html

Teaching

Biology of Vision
Genomics of Sensory Systems

Graduate Program Affiliations

BISI - Behavior, Ecology, Evolution, & Systematics (BEES)
BISI - Physiological Systems (PSYS)

Research Interests

Evolution of visual systems and visual communication: genetics of visual system tuning; physical modeling of color signals and visual discrimination. African cichlid fishes serve as a model to explore how natural and sexual selection drive communication. Evolution of rod and cone phototransduction: tuning photoreceptor responsivity through evolution of protein structure and gene expression. A comparative genomic approach utilizing a diversity of vertebrates including mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and agnathans.

Recent Publications

Hofmann CM and Carleton KL. 2009. Gene duplication and differential gene expression play an important role in the diversification of visual pigments in fish. Integrative and Comparative Biology in press.
Seehausen O, Terai Y, Magalhaes, IS, Carleton KL, Mrosso HDJ, Miyagi R, van der Sluijs I, Schneider MV, Maan ME, Tachida H, Imai H and Okada N. 2008. Speciation through sensory drive in cichlid fish. Nature 455:620-6.
Carleton KL, Spady TC, Streelman JT, Kidd MR, McFarland WN, and Loew ER. 2008. Visual sensitivities tuned by heterochronic shifts in opsin gene expression. BMC Biology 6:22.
Spady TC, Parry JWL, Robinson PR, Hunt DM, Bowmaker JK and Carleton KL. 2006. Evolution of the cichlid visual palette through ontogenetic subfunctionalization of the opsin gene arrays. Mol Biol Evol 23: 1538-1547.
Carleton KL, Parry JWL, Bowmaker JK, Hunt DM and Seehausen O. 2005. Color vision and speciation in Lake Victoria cichlids of the genus Pundamilia. Molecular Ecology 14: 4341-53.
Parry JWL, Carleton KL, Spady TC, Carboo A, Hunt DM and Bowmaker JK. 2005. Mix and match colour vision: tuning spectral sensitivity by differential opsin gene expression in Lake Malawi cichlids. Curr Biol 15: 1734-9.
Carleton KL, Spady TC, and Cote RH. 2005. Rod and cone opsin families differ in spectral tuning domains but not signal transducing domains as judged by saturated evolutionary trace analysis. J Mol Evol 61: 75-89.

Education

Ph.D., University of Colorado, 1987.