Dr. Hernán López-Fernández will be giving a talk titled, “Ancient adaptive radiations and morphological convergence in Neotropical cichlid fishes,” on Friday, February 7.   He is a Curator of Ichthyology in the Department of Natural History at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada.  As a Curator at the ROM, Hernán’s research focuses on the evolutionary biology of South and Central American cichlids. The freshwaters of South and Central America are estimated to harbor well over 6,000 species of fishes, more than any other biogeographic region on Earth. Among this great diversity, cichlid fishes are remarkable for their morphological, ecological and behavioral diversity. Although cichlids are well-known models of adaptive evolution in lakes, little is known about their diversification in rivers. Hernán combines field and laboratory research in systematics, biogeography and evolutionary biology to study the radiations of American cichlids as models of the evolutionary history of Neotropical fishes. Comparative evolutionary studies of cichlids and other groups should provide a powerful tool to understand the origin of the most diverse freshwater fish fauna on the planet.