Kenneth Kozak

Associate Professor, Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology
100 Ecology Building
kozak016@umn.edu
+1 612 624 3982
Amphibian and Reptile Collection at the Bell Museum

Education

Ph.D., Washington University

Areas of Interest

Phylogeography, molecular ecology, and historical biogeography of amphibians and reptiles; biodiversity informatics; applications of GIS to evolutionary biology, ecology, and conservation biology.

Teaching

FW 4101 - Herpetology (Spring odd years)

FW 4301 - Conservation Genetics (Spring even years)

K Kozak

Research

Research in my laboratory uses amphibians and reptiles as a study system to understand the evolutionary and ecological mechanisms by which species diversify and accumulate through time. Much of our work involves reconstructing the evolutionary history of populations and species using molecular data. We then combine that information with spatial-environmental data to investigate how climatic variation, geology, and other features of the landscape influence patterns of genetic variation and species diversity. Ongoing research in the lab is focused on (1) phylogeography and speciation in temperate and tropical salamanders, (2) the influence of climate change on the evolution and persistence of montane amphibians, and (3) understanding how evolutionary history and climatic variation interact to drive latitudinal and elevational variation in species diversity.

Select Publications

  • Markle, T.M. +, and K.H. Kozak. 2018. Low acclimation capacity of narrow-ranging thermal specialists exposes susceptibility to global climate change. Ecology and Evolution, In press.
  • Kozak, K.H. 2017 What drives variation in plethodontid salamander species richness over space and time? Herpetologica 73:220-228. (invited review)
  • Lyons, M.P. +, D.B. Shepard++, and K.H. Kozak. 2016. Determinants of range limits in montane woodland salamanders (Genus: Plethodon). Copeia 104:101–110.
  • Boyer, S.L, T.M. Markle+, A.M. +, Luxbacher, C.M.+. Baker, and K.H. Kozak. 2016. Habitat stability predicts diversity of dispersal-limited arachnids in Australia’s Wet Tropics: A test of the hypothesis that forest refugia act as museums of biodiversity. Journal of Biogeography 43:1400-1411.
  • Kozak, K. H., and J. J. Wiens. 2016a. Testing the relationships between diversification, species richness, and trait evolution. Systematic Biology 65:975-988.
  • Kozak, K. H., and J. J. Wiens. 2016b. What explains patterns of species richness? The relative importance of climatic-niche evolution, morphological evolution, and ecological limits in salamanders. Ecology and Evolution 6:5940–5949.
  • Wiens, J.J., K.H. Kozak, and N. Silva. 2013. Diversity and niche evolution along aridity gradients in North American lizards (Phrynosomatidae). Evolution 67:1515-1728.
  • Kozak, K.H., and Wiens, J.J. 2012. Phylogeny, ecology, and the origins of climate-richness relationships. Ecology 93:S167-S181.
  • Gifford, M.E. ++, and Kozak, K.H. 2012. Islands in the sky or squeezed at the top?  Ecological causes of elevational range limits in montane salamanders. Ecography 35:192-203.