Justin Bernstein

• Doctor of Philosophy
• NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at American Museum of Natural History

Species loss in fragile insular communities can alter the composition and stability of local assemblages. Climate change or anthropogenic pressures are sometimes attributed to the loss of Caribbean bats, but other factors are elusive to document. We studied time-scaled changes in bat assemblage composition from a palaeontological excavation in Cuev...

"I shall not pretend to assert that they are as numerous as land snakes; but it is very likely that one hundred species at least of this tribe exist in the waters of the ocean, lakes, and rivers." C. S. Rafinesque, 1817. Dissertation on water snakes, sea snakes, and sea serpents. Philosophical Transaction When Rafinesque wrote this, 14 species of...

Characterization of species distributions is a fundamental challenge in biodiversity science, with particular significance for downstream evolutionary studies, conservation efforts, field-based faunal studies and estimates of species diversity. Checklists and phylogenetic studies often focus on poorly known, rare taxa with limited ranges. However,...

homalopsids (old World Mud Snakes) include 59 semiaquatic species in Asia and Australasia that display an array of morphological adaptations, behaviors, and microhabitat preferences. these attributes make homalopsids an ideal model system for broader questions in evolutionary biology, but the diversity of this understudied group of snakes is still...

Biofluorescent tissues in vertebrates are commonly observed phenomena that have been found in a widevariety of taxonomic groups. The fluorescence of bone has recently been found visible through the skin in some squamates,although its function is poorly known. While this phenomenon has been observed in lizards, no publishedrecords of ultraviolet (UV...

Puerto Rico harbors a diverse vertebrate fauna with high levels of endemism. However, while several books for vertebrate diversity and local checklists for birds have been published, checklists of amphibians, reptiles, and bats are lacking or nonexistent at both local and regional scales. In this study, we documented the amphibian, reptile, and bat...

Understanding and predicting the relationships between genotype and phenotype is often challenging, largely due to the complex nature of eukaryotic gene regulation. A step towards this goal is to map how phenotypic diversity evolves through genomic changes that modify gene regulatory interactions. Using the Prairie Rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis) an...

We present genome assemblies for 18 snake species representing 18 families (Serpentes: these new genome assemblies, we extracted thousands of loci commonly used in systematic and phylogenomic studies on snakes, including target-capture datasets composed of UCEs and AHEs, as well as traditional Sanger loci. Phylogenies inferred from the two target-c...

We present genome assemblies for 18 snake species representing 18 families (Serpentes: Caenophidia): Acrochordus granulatus, Aparallactus werneri, Boaedon fuliginosus, Calamaria suluensis, Cerberus rynchops, Grayia smithii, Imantodes cenchoa, Mimophis mahfalensis, Oxyrhabdium leporinum, Pareas carinatus, Psammodynastes pulverulentus, Pseudoxenodon...

Puerto Rico harbors a diverse vertebrate fauna with high levels of endemism. However, while several books for vertebrate diversity and local checklists for birds have been published, checklists of amphibians, reptiles, and bats are lacking or nonexistent at both local and regional scales. In this study, we documented the amphibian, reptile, and bat...

Divergence dating analyses in systematics provide a framework to develop and test biogeographic hypotheses regarding speciation. However, as molecular datasets grow from multilocus to genomic, sample sizes decrease due to computational burdens, and the testing of fine-scale biogeographic hypotheses becomes difficult. In this study, we use coalescen...

Our knowledge of the biodiversity of Asia and Australasia continues to expand with more focused studies on systematics of various groups and their biogeography. Historically, fluctuating sea levels and cyclic connection and separation of now-disjunct landmasses have been invoked to explain the accumulation of biodiversity via species pump mechanism...

Divergence dating analyses in systematics provide a framework to develop and test biogeographic hypotheses regarding speciation. However, as molecular datasets grow from multilocus to genomic, sample sizes decrease due to computational burdens, and the testing of fine-scale biogeographic hypotheses becomes difficult. In this study, we use coalescen...

Widespread species often harbor unrecognized genetic diversity, and investigating the factors associated with such cryptic variation can help us better understand the forces driving diversification. Here, we identify potential cryptic species based on a comprehensive dataset of COI mitochondrial DNA barcodes from 2,333 individual Panamanian birds a...

In this study, based on morphological and molecular data, a new bush frog species is described from Yunnan, China. Eleven samples of Raorchestes malipoensis sp. nov. were collected from Malipo County, southeastern Yunnan. This species can be distinguished from other congeners by a combination of 13 morphological characters. Phylogenetic analyses ba...

Advances in both morphological and molecular techniques have uncovered many lineages across the tree of life, and Neotropical vertebrates are no exception. Sphaerodactylus geckos (Sphaerodactylidae) are abundant and important components of the Neotropical herpetofauna, but few studies have thoroughly investigated them using a combination of morphol...

Over the past decade, museum genomics studies have focused on obtaining DNA of sufficient quality and quantity for sequencing from fluid-preserved natural history specimens, primarily to be used in systematic studies. While these studies have opened windows to evolutionary and biodiversity knowledge of many species worldwide, published works often...

The Philippine coral snakes of the genus Hemibungarus consist of three poorly known endemic species, constituting some of the most enigmatic elapid snakes in the world. Because of their secretive, subterranean, and heretofore undocumented microhabitat preferences, very little is known of these lineages. We present a synthetic description of aposema...

Many phylogeographic studies on species with large ranges have found genetic-geographic structure associated with changes in habitat and physical barriers preventing or reducing gene flow. These interactions with geographic space, contemporary and historical climate, and biogeographic barriers have complex effects on contemporary population genetic...

The Philippine-endemic elapid genus Hemibungarus consists of three described species that are widely distributed across northern and central portions of the archipelago. Hemibungarus calligaster, H. mcclungi, and H. gemianulis were originally diagnosed, and remain recognized today, primarily based on differences in color pattern. Previous studies a...

Cyrtodactylus geckos are one of the most speciose and diverse groups of extant lizards known, distributed throughout the Asian and Pacific realms. Using molecular phylogenetic methods and supporting morphological data, we describe a new species of Cyrtodactylus in Daweishan National Nature Reserve, Yunnan Province, China. Cyrtodactylus hekouensis s...

New Caledonia is the smallest global biodiversity hotspot, yet has one of the highest levels of endemism for an insular region of its size. Lizards are the dominant vertebrate fauna, and, while ecologically important, can be difficult to identify and many are in decline due to anthropogenic threats. As an aid to facilitate identification, we genera...

Mud snakes (Serpentes: Homalopsidae) are a family of 54 described, mainly aquatic, species primarily distributed throughout mainland Southeast Asia and the Indo-Australian Archipelago. Although they have been the focus of prior research, the basic relationships amongst genera and species remain poorly known. We used a combined mitochondrial and nuc...

The reptile fauna of Tinhosa Grande islet, Gulf of Guinea, comprises an endemic skink, Trachylepis adamastor, and an unidentified species of gecko of the genus Hemidactylus. Until recently, no molecular data were available for either species, impeding their phylogenetic placement. However, due to several synapomorphic characters, it was suggested t...

Cylindrophis is a genus of secretive, semi-fossorial, non-venomous snakes comprising 14 species, characterized by a generally cylindrical body, uniform scales (with barely enlarged ventrals), and vestiges of pelvic and limb bones, the latter terminating in a claw lateral to the vent. We reconstructed a concatenated molecular phylogeny of seven taxa...

Geographic range extension of Acrochordus granulatus in the Philippines