Gonzalo Giribet
Faculty Support: Bridget Power
My primary research focuses on the evolution and biogeography of invertebrate animals and in the use of museum specimens for genomic research. In the lab we use genomic and morphological data from living and extinct animals to better understand invertebrate evolution and changes in their distributions through time. A large body of our work focuses on arthropods and mollusks, but we also investigate many other groups of invertebrates, including velvet worms, nemerteans, priapulans, and many smaller phyla. Current NSF-funded projects include CSBR: Natural History: Preserving the genomes of the type specimens in the Museum of Comparative Zoology and Collaborative Research: PurSUiT: Understanding the Neotropical Velvet Worms (Onychophora, Peripatidae, Neopatida), a Cretaceous Radiation of Terrestrial Panarthropods
Recent Publications
Frigyik, E., Baker, C. M., Derkarabetian, S., Sirvid, P. J., & Giribet, G. (2025). Tiny hunters along the Alpine Fault: Integrative phylobiogeography demonstrates high geographic structure in a forest-dwelling Aotearoa harvester genus (Arachnida, Triaenonychidae: Algidia). Journal of Biogeography, 52, e15097. https:/doi.org/10.1111/jbi.15097
Giribet, G., Anilkumar, P. A., Goodwin, A., Stewart, R. S., Watkis, C. A., Whyte, D., & Hormiga, G. (2025). On the troglobitic velvet worm Speleoperipatus spelaeus Peck, 1975 (Onychophora, Peripatidae): assessing the status of a Critically Endangered Jamaican invertebrate. Subterranean Biology, 51, 49–59. https:/doi.org/10.3897/subtbiol.51.151034
Sato, S., Appeldorff, C., Wangensteen, O. S., Garcés-Pastor, S., Laumer, C. E., Herranz, M., Giribet, G., Renault, D., Møller, P. R., & Worsaae, K. (2025). Phylogenomics of the rarest animals: A second species of Micrognathozoa identified by machine learning. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 292, 20242867. https:/doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.2867
Torrado, H., Leiva, C., Riesgo, A., Lemer, S., Perez, A., Lorente-Sorolla, J. M., Carlson, B., Awai, M., Giribet, G., & Combosch, D. J. (2025). Nautilus sex determination is unique among cephalopods. Current Biology.
González-Delgado, S., Rodríguez-Flores, P. C., & Giribet, G. (2024). Testing ultraconserved elements (UCEs) for phylogenetic inference across bivalves (Mollusca: Bivalvia) Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 198, 108129. https:/doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2024.108129
Rodríguez-Flores, P. C., Torrado, H., Combosch, D., & Giribet, G. (2024). Diversity of squat lobsters on coral reefs in Guam, Mariana Islands, with the description of two new species and notes on their natural history. Marine Biodiversity, 54, 57. https:/doi.org/10.1007/s12526-024-01446-4
Sato, S., Derkarabetian, S., Lord, A., & Giribet, G. (2024). An ultraconserved element probe set for velvet worms (Onychophora). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 197, 108115. https:/doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2024.108115
Giribet, G., Wangensteen, O. S., Garcés-Pastor, S., Møller, P. R., & Worsaae, K. (2023). Using eDNA to find Micrognathozoa. Current Biology, 33, R756–R757.
Lord, A., Cunha, T. J., de Medeiros, B. A. S., Sato, S., Khost, D. E., Sackton, T. B., & Giribet, G. (2023). Expanding on our knowledge of ecdysozoan genomes: A contiguous assembly of the meiofaunal priapulan Tubiluchus corallicola. Genome Biology and Evolution, 15. https:/doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evad103
Courses Taught
OEB 91R Supervised Reading
OEB 99R Supervised Research
OEB 11 Introduction to Tropical Biology
OEB 51 Biology and Evolution of Invertebrate Animals
OEB 141 Biogeography
OEB 181 Systematics
OEB 310 Metazoan Systematics