Bagley Lab Members
The Bagley Lab welcomes people of any race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender identity, gender expression, caregiver and family commitments, political affiliation, sexual orientation, and eligible age or disability status.See our lab compact and philosophy.
Justin C. Bagley, Ph.D.
he/him/his
Principal Investigator
jbagley (at) jsu.edu
https://justinbagley.org
0000-0001-6737-8380 
justincbagley 
Scholar Citations 
@justincbagley 
justincbagley Justin C. Bagley is currently an Assistant Professor of Biology in the Department of Biology at Jacksonville State University, and an Affiliate Researcher in the Department of Biology at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is an Instructor for majors/non-majors Introductory Biology I, Ecology, Ichthyology, Biodiversity, and the graduate Seminar in Systematics; a researcher in the ecology and evolution of animals and plants from North America and the Neotropics; and the developer of PIrANHA, RADish, and several other software repositories for analyzing population genomic and phylogenomic datasets.
After receiving his B.S. and M.Sc. degrees in Biology from The University of Alabama in 2004 and 2008, Justin received his Ph.D. in Integrative Biology in 2014, from Brigham Young University for his work on comparative phylogeography and species delimitation in Central American freshwater fishes under Jerry Johnson. He was a Young Talent Fellow postdoc in Brazil’s CNPq Science Without Borders program under Francisco Langeani and Guarino Colli at the Universidade de Brasília, 2015–2017, and during 2017 to 2018, he completed a postdoc in Andrew Eckert’s Plant Evolutionary Genetics Laboratory at Virginia Commonwealth University on the genomics of ecological speciation and local adaptation in southwestern white pine (Pinus strobiformis). From 2018-2020, he served as Postdoctoral Research Associate in Plant Phylogenomics in the Muchhala Lab in the Department of Biology at the University of Missouri–St. Louis (UMSL).
Justin is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist focusing on problems in molecular ecology, distributional ecology, and biodiversity science. He is particularly interested in using genome-wide SNP and sequence capture data (Hyb-Seq, UCEs) to understand how historical and ecological processes shape the spatial and temporal distributions of biodiversity in freshwater and terrestrial environments. On the ecological side, he is primarily interested in ecological niche modeling (ENM) and its various applications, as well as applied research in ichthyology including biological assessment (e.g. biomonitoring), DNA barcoding, and community ecology of freshwater fishes. Current research projects focus on conservation genomics, phylogeography, phylogenomics, speciation, and local adaptation, as well as using ENMs to understand the niche requirements and past, present, and future distributions of species.
Justin is a Review Editor for Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (since 2021) and regularly serves as a reviewer for Systematic Biology, Molecular Ecology, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, PeerJ, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and a dozen other journals in ecology and evolutionary biology.
Justin’s list of conflicts of interest (CoIs) is available here.
Rachel is a junior undergraduate student at JSU, where she is majoring in Biology and is on the pre-med track. In the Bagley Lab, Rachel works on applying techniques in ecological niche modeling to predict the past, present, and future distributional areas of species. She has been working on ENM of largeleaf pennywort Hydrocotyle bonariensis Comm. ex Lam., a perennial flowering plant with a creeping habit from family Araliaceae that is native to dunes and other coastal areas around the globe, including sandy dunes of the southeastern US. Rachel’s work is inserted within a broader ENM project predicting responses of Alabama’s coastal dune plant species to global climate change.
Outside of lab, Rachel enjoys hiking and hanging out with family and friends and her dog, Lucy.
Christian Braswell
he/him/his
Graduate Student (M.S.)
cbraswell (at) stu.jsu.edu
Christian was an undergraduate at The University of West Alabama, where he worked in The Laboratory of Aquatic Evolution (LAQE) of Dr. Michael Sandel on DNA sequencing, animal husbandry, and other projects (e.g. fieldwork, identification, DNA barcoding, and phylogeography of freshwater fishes), and where he also directed the lab’s outreach program.
He recently moved to Jacksonville in 2021 to start his Master’s studies in Biology here at JSU under Dr. Bagley. For his thesis project, Christian is working on the conservation genomics of Blue Shiner (Cyprinella caerulea), a minnow species native to the Coosa and Cahaba drainages of the Mobile Basin in Alabama, as well as northwest Georgia and southeastern Tennessee. Blue Shiner are federally listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, and are of conservation concern due to pollution, sedimentation, and other human impacts. He is also actively involved in our PhylogatR Global Fish Project.
Macee came to JSU from Anniston High School (Anniston, AL), where she was the Valedictorian of her graduating class. She is currently a sophomore undergraduate student and is majoring in Biology. In the Bagley Lab, Macee is interested in learning more about fishes, ecology, genetics, and integrative taxonomy. Macee has been an active participant in lab meetings this semester and is collaborating on our PhylogatR Global Fish Project. We are excited that she will be starting an independent study project in the lab during Spring 2022 semester.
Outside of the lab, Macee is the President of the JSU Chapter of The National Society of Leadership and Success (NSLS). In her free time, she enjoys singing (choir), animals (e.g. fishkeeping), and the outdoors.
Kayla Morrow
she/her/hers
Undergraduate Student
kmorrow5 (at) stu.jsu.edu
Kayla is currently a sophomore undergraduate student at JSU, where she is majoring in Biology. In the Bagley Lab, Kayla is interested in learning more about ecology, evolution, DNA sequencing, population genomics, and hybridization. Kayla is assisting with multiple projects, and her two main projects right now are (1) the PhylogatR Global Fish Project and (2) our ENM project predicting responses of Alabama’s coastal dune plant species to global climate change.
Outside of lab, Kayla enjoys being outdoors, keeping and breeding pythons and boas, modeling, and hanging out with friends and her dog, Titus.