Research in the Light lab is focused on the evolution, systematics, and population genetics of vertebrate and invertebrate taxa.  We investigate cospeciation between mammals and their parasites to determine which factors are important in driving the association between distantly related taxa.  In our research, we hope to learn how hosts and parasites interact through time and how these interactions are affected by the population dynamics and other microevolutionary processes of the associated taxa.  Understanding these interactions at the population level can potentially help us understand what effects natural history and ecology have on evolutionary processes such as coevolution.  Past research in the lab has focused on multiple mammal-parasite assemblages (pocket gophers and chewing lice, heteromyid rodents and sucking lice, and a three-tiered assemblage of primates, sucking lice, and endosymbiotic bacteria).  In general, research in the Light Lab relies on field work and Museum specimens, and we utilize molecular and morphological data from these recent and ancient specimens to help elucidate broad evolutionary processes operating in distantly related taxa.