Email: alexandra.howard@ag.tamu.edu
Dr. Howard is currently a postdoctoral research associate in the Lawing Lab. She now works on phenotypic evolution of sympatric congeners, using spiny lizards (Sceloporus) as a study system. She is working on our NSF grant, “Inferring the impacts of closely-related species on phenotypic evolution.”
For her PhD she studied the origin of snakes, with particular focus on snakes that specialise in fossoriality (burrowing underground) under supervision of Prof. Jason Head. She received her PhD from the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, and she received a Research Master’s from Imperial College London, and her undergraduate degree from University College London.
Alex is broadly interested in how species adapt to their environments, and how this influences the diversity of life on earth. When not thinking about science, she is busy in her role as president of the TAMU Postdoctoral Association.
Publications
- Howard, A. F. C. (2023) Digging deeper into snake origins: Body size evolution and ecomorphological correlates to fossoriality provide new data on the ecological origin of snakes. J. Vert. Paleo. (suppl.)
- Head, J. J., Howard, A. F.C., and Müller, J. (2022) The First 80 Million Years of Snake Evolution: The Mesozoic fossil record of snakes and its implications for origin hypotheses, biogeography, and mass extinction. Ch 3. pg 26-54 In The Origin and Early Evolutionary History of Snakes. (Ed. Gower, D. J. & Zaher, H.) Cambridge University Press
- Howard, A. F. C., and Head, J. J. (2021) Inferring homoplasy in cranial morphology associated with fossoriality in snakes. J. Vert. Paleo. 41 (suppl.)
- Howard, A. F. C. and Head, J. J. (2019) Alternate phylogenetic positions of fossils affects body size estimates of snake origins. J. Morph. 280: S141