Dr. Noa Shenkar, Department of Biology, Washington University, Seattle WA
Ascidian Identification, Phylogeny and Systematics

Ascidian
Ascidians (Phylum: Chordata, Class: Ascidiacea), or sea squirts, are the largest and most diverse class of the sub-phylum Tunicata (also known as Urochordata). Recent phylogenomic studies place the tunicates as the sister group to the vertebrates suggesting they are our closest relatives among the invertebrates and providing a fertile ground for evolutionary and developmental studies. During the past two decades enormous progress has been achieved in the fields of development, evolution, immunology, natural products and ecology of ascidians.
Despite the enormous progress that has been achieved in the field of ascidian research worldwide, only a few studies have focused on the ascidians of the Red Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. During my graduate work with Professor Yossi Loya, Tel-Aviv University, I studied ecological aspects of the ascidian fauna along the coasts of Israel. I began training as an ascidian taxonomist and established a museum collection of this group at the National Collections of Natural History at Tel Aviv University. This collection is unique because it enables future molecular studies on material preserved in Ethanol together with classic taxonomic studies on the matching species. My collaboration with the Smithsonian Barcoding of Life project http://www.barcodinglife.org/ resulted in the sequencing of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I from all specimens in my collection.