AMPHIBIAN & REPTILE BIODIVERSITY LAB @ UNM
Evolution | Herpetology | Conservation | Genomics
Lisa N. Barrow, Ph.D. (she/her)
Division of Amphibians & Reptiles, Museum of Southwestern Biology
Department of Biology, University of New Mexico
Assistant Professor & Curator
We are part of the University of New Mexico Biology Department and the Division of Amphibians & Reptiles at the Museum of Southwestern Biology.
Our research combines fieldwork, natural history collections, ecological data, genomic sequencing, and computational analyses spanning phylogenetics and population genetics to investigate how species respond to global change.
R. Barrow
Recent Publications
Wiley DLF‡, Omlor KN^, Torres López AS*, Eberle CM*, Savage AE, Atkinson MS, Barrow LN. 2025. Leveraging machine learning to uncover multi-pathogen infection dynamics across co-distributed frog families. PeerJ 13:e18901. doi: https://peerj.com/articles/18901
In this study led by PhD student Dani Wiley, we screened for three major amphibian pathogens (the fungus Batrachochytrium dentrobatidis (Bd), viruses in the genus Ranavirus (Rv), and the protozoan known as Amphibian Perkinsea (Pk)) within 12 abundant and widespread frog taxa in the eastern US. We found differences in prevalence and intensity among pathogens and host taxa, with Bd being the most prevalent and Ranidae having the highest prevalence and intensity among frogs. We then built random forest models to identify key predictors of infection, highlighting the utility of machine learning approaches and broad geographic sampling for studying multi-host, multi-pathogen systems.
Nava Martinez M@*, Amador L@#, Wiley DFW‡, McDaniels CX‡, Barrow LN. 2025. Population genomics of four co-distributed frog species in a barrier island system. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 145:blae063. @Co-1st author
Co-led by McNair Scholar Maria Nava Martinez and postdoc Dr. Luis Amador, we conducted the first population genomics study of four frog species in northern Florida barrier islands. Using genome-wide sequencing data (i.e., ddRAD), we demonstrated consistent effects of islands on diversity among species, with lower diversity in island populations compared to their mainland counterparts. We also found subtle population genetic structure and evidence of recent gene flow, which likely contributes to the persistence of these small populations.
Amador LA#, Arroyo-Torres I, Barrow LN. 2024. Machine learning and phylogenetic models identify predictors of genetic variation in Neotropical amphibians. Journal of Biogeography. doi: 10.1111/jbi.14795
In this paper led by postdoc Dr. Luis Amador, we compiled 4,052 mitochondrial DNA sequences from 256 amphibian species, georeferencing sequences from 176 species that were not linked to occurrence data. We identified predictors of nucleotide diversity, isolation-by-distance (IBD), and isolation-by-environment (IBE) used machine learning (Random Forests) and phylogenetic models. We also identified biogeographic units that harbor high genetic diversity across many species.
