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 Wm. Leo Smith, Ph.D.
Member, Pritzker Lab Management Committee
Zoology Department,
Assistant Curator of Fishes
Leo Smith, Assistant Curator of Fishes in the Department of Zoology, studies the evolutionary biology and venomology of fishes. In particular, he is interested in the large-scale phenomena that have shaped the history and diversification of fishes in both space and time. Dr. Smith uses a combination of evolutionary trees and detailed anatomical, genomic, or biogeographic analyses to explore these phenomena.
Dr. Smith’s research focuses on the relationships of spiny-rayed fishes, which includes such familiar fishes as the cods, groupers, and cichlids. He has recently joined a team of researchers who are working on a National Science Foundation funded project to resolve the evolutionary relationships among the major groups of fishes. The resulting framework will facilitate informed predictions about the characteristics of fishes and improve the evolutionary context for understanding the genetics of model organisms such as the zebrafish and pufferfish.
Dr. Smith also studies the evolution of venomous fishes. Each year, fish venom is implicated in some 50,000 injuries. Dr. Smith’s research has revealed that there are far more venomous fish species than the estimate of 200 that was previously recorded from medical records. His large-scale analysis of more than one million base pairs of DNA sequence data led him to discover that more than 2,000 species of fishes are venomous. By combining this genetic data with detailed anatomical investigation, he was able to show that there are far more venomous fishes than all other venomous vertebrates combined.
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