Jeremy Wright

Jeremy Wright was born in 1981 in Postville, Iowa, U.S.A. He graduated from the University of Rhode Island in 2004, with Bachelor's degrees in Marine Biology and Chemistry. He then went on to the University of Florida, where he was granted a Master's degree in Zoology in 2006. He is currently in his fifth year of Ph.D. study in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan, with projected graduation in 2011.

Jeremy's interest in catfishes began at the University of Florida, where he worked under the auspices of the All Catfish Species Inventory, a five year, National Science Foundation funded project to discover and describe previously unknown catfish species diversity. Prior to this time, his research focus had been elasmobranch fishes, specifically, their electroreceptive capabilities and how these might be used in prey discrimination and development of foraging strategies. In Florida, Jeremy studied the taxonomy and systematics of African catfishes, with particular focus on rift lake species, producing a taxonomic revision of the well known Tanganyikan Synodontis species flock as his Master's thesis.

Since moving to Ann Arbor, Jeremy has also developed an interest in the venom production capabilities of catfishes, making this the subject of his current dissertation work. A recently published paper documented the diversity and phylogenetic relationships of venomous catfish families, greatly increasing estimates of venomous catfish species diversity. His current work focuses on the comparative toxicity of North American catfishes and its ecological and evolutionary correlates, and the chemical and genetic characterization of the toxic components of these fishes' venoms. He still maintains an active research interest in rift lake catfishes, including current projects involving trophic ecology and phenotypic similarity in Lake Tanganyikan Synodontis species, and several soon to be described new Tanganyikan catfish species, as well as a new genus!