Aidan Couzens

• Bachelor of Science (Zoology/Geology) UWA 2008
• Research Associate at Flinders University

Explaining the Late Pleistocene demise of many of the world's larger terrestrial vertebrates is arguably the most enduring and debated topic in Quaternary science. Australia lost >90% of its larger species by around 40 thousand years (ka) ago, but the relative importance of human impacts and increased aridity remains unclear. Resolving the debate h...

The reversibility of phenotypic evolution is likely to be strongly influenced by the ability of underlying developmental systems to generate ancestral traits. However, few studies have quantitatively linked these developmental dynamics to traits which re-evolve. In this study we assess how changes in the inhibitory cascade, a developmental system t...

Secrets revealed by kangaroo teeth The teeth of mammals display complex adaptations to diet and can thus provide a window into the environments of extinct species. Couzens and Prideaux used such a window to examine the expansion and diversification of kangaroos, Australia's largest herbivores (see the Perspective by Polly). True kangaroos diversifi...

Significance Interactions during development among genes, cells, and tissues can favor the more frequent generation of some trait variants compared with others. This developmental bias has often been considered to constrain adaptation, but its exact influence on evolution is poorly understood. Using computer simulations of development, we provide e...

The tetrapod limb has long served as a model for elucidating molecular and cellular mechanisms driving tissue patterning, development and evolution. While significant advances have been made in understanding the drivers of limb initiation, outgrowth, and patterning, the early morphogenetic processes that transform the lateral plate mesoderm (LPM) i...

Diprotodontians are the morphologically and ecologically most diverse order of marsupials. However, an approximately 30-million-year gap in the Australian terrestrial vertebrate fossil record means that the first half of diprotodontian evolution is unknown. Fossil taxa from immediately either side of this gap are therefore critical for reconstructi...

The late Oligocene taxa Marada arcanum and Mukupirna nambensis (Diprotodontia, Vombatiformes) are the only known representatives of the families Maradidae and Mukupirnidae, respectively. Mukupirna nambensis was described from a partial skeleton, including a cranium but no dentary, and reconstructed as the sister taxon to Vombatidae (wombats). By co...

The opossum ( Monodelphis domestica ), with its sequenced genome, ease of laboratory care and experimental manipulation, and unique biology, is the most used laboratory marsupial. Using the mammalian methylation array, we generated DNA methylation data from n = 100 opossum samples from the ear, liver, and tail. We contrasted postnatal development a...

Teeth were an important innovation in vertebrate evolution but basic aspects of early dental evolution remain poorly understood. Teeth differ from other odontode organs, like scales, in their organized, sequential pattern of replacement. However, tooth replacement patterns also vary between the major groups of jawed vertebrates. Although tooth repl...

Dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA) quantifies microscopic scar or wear patterns left on teeth by different foods or extraneous ingested items such as grit. It can be a powerful tool for deducing the diets of extinct mammals. Here we investigate how intraspecific variation in the dental microwear of macropodids (kangaroos and their close relat...

Differentiating between ancient and rapidly-evolved clades is critical for understanding impacts of environmental change on biodiversity. Australia possesses many aridity-adapted lineages, the origins of which have been linked by molecular evidence to late Miocene drying. Using dental macrowear and molar crown-height measurements spanning the past...