Throughout all my life I was haunted by the indescribable beauty and diversity of the living creatures on our planet. Back in the days this passion created irresistible need to expand knowledge about them. When I started to walk and was left unattended by parents for a few seconds at the same moment first animals appeared in our house. I was collecting and housing everything I could catch – lizards, newts, birds. Even though I was interested in everything what was crawling, croaking, flying around me, the strongest thirst for exploration I experienced when I was looking at the water surface. It appeared as mysterious, inaccessible world and I always wanted to reveal its secrets, to have a look inside. This became a cornerstone of my interest to aquatic ecosystems and to the fish – inexhaustible source of colours and forms, behavioural strategies and species. Furthermore, I discovered a brave new world of molecular biology during university studies. As well as a world beneath the water it’s hidden from a human eye and exploration of molecular machinery behind diversity of life is truly breathtaking. I have an outstanding possibility to explore both enigmatic worlds together as a member of the FishEvo group. My current project is devoted to the hemoglobin gene evolution in cichlid fishes.

Research interests:

1) Evolution, ecology, physiology, systematics of fish.

2) Genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics.

3) Bioinformatics and high-performance computing.

Publications:

Musilova, Z., Indermaur, A., Bitja-Nyom, A.R., Omelchenko, D., Kłodawska, M., Albergati, L., Remišová, K. & Salzburger, W. (2019). Evolution of Visual Sensory System in Cichlid Fishes from Crater Lake Barombi Mbo in Cameroon. Molecular Ecology, 28 (23), 5010-5031.

Lupše, N., Kłodawska, M., Truhlářová, V., Košátko, P., Kašpar, V., Nyom, A. R. B., & Musilova, Z. (2022). Developmental changes of opsin gene expression in ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii). Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 289(1986), 20221855.