Dr. David Cannatella

Biography

David Cannatella is the Department Chair of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin. He has a profound expertise in systematics and his research focuses on phylogenomics and the evolution of amphibians and reptiles. He serves as the Associate Director of the UT Biodiversity Center and has an impressive academic background, having received his undergraduate degree from the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette and both his Master's and PhD from the University of Kansas in Lawrence. His mentors during his studies included William E. Duellman and Linda Trueb. At the University of Kansas, he was exposed to a well-known center for the study of systematics of amphibians and reptiles, which shaped his research trajectory. Cannatella also conducted research at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, under the mentorship of esteemed faculty members David Wake and Marvalee Wake. In 1990, he joined the University of Texas as a tenured faculty member and has been instrumental in investigating the evolution of amphibians with a special focus on higher-level phylogeny, Neotropical frog biodiversity, the evolution of mating calls in frogs, and behavioral ecology of poison frogs, leveraging bioinformatics in his systematics work. Additionally, he is involved in the Biodiversity Collections Department of Integrative Biology.

Research Interests