Profile
Sam Price
Biological Sciences
Assistant Professor
864-656-3961
Jordan Hall 107 [Lab]
Jordan Hall 108 [Conference Room]
Long Hall 336 [Office]
Educational Background
Ph.D., Biological Sciences, University of Virginia
B.A. (Oxon), Biological Sciences, Oxford University (UK)
Research Interests
My research aims to identify repeating themes and general principles governing the evolution of biodiversity. I am interested in how the uneven distribution of ecological, morphological and species diversity has evolved and how it may have been influenced by the biology of the organism and the environment in which it lives. I work at the macro-scale, investigating global patterns over long periods of time across large clades. To enable me to work at this scale I use data and methods from across evolutionary and organismal biology and paleobiology and apply data science techniques, tapping the reserves of scientific data in museum collections, published literature, as well as online databases. Central to my research is the generation and analysis of ecomorphological databases, consisting of linear measurements and geometric morphometric descriptions of shape taken from museum specimens, enabling me to integrate fossil and living diversity. I specialise in the implementation of modern phylogenetic comparative methods in a high performance-computing framework. I am currently leading two major projects, one on teleost fishes and the other on mammals, which together encompass over half of all vertebrate diversity.
Courses Taught
BIOL 3350 Evolutionary Biology
BIOL 4930 Senior Seminar "Evolutionary Medicine"
BIOL 8230 Modern Macroevolutionary Methods
BIOL 8710 Special Topics: Science Behind the Bias in STEM - Co-taught
BIOL 8000 Concepts in Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology - Co-taught
BIOL 4940/4941 Creative Inquiry "FishShapes: exploring the evolution of body form diversity across fishes"
Selected Publications
Reuter, D., Hopkins, S.S.H & Price, S.A. (2023) What is a mammalian omnivore? Insights
into mammalian diet diversity, body mass, and evolution. Proceedings of the Royal Society
Biological Sciences 290(1992), p.20221062
Miller, E.C., Martinez, C. M., Friedman, S.T., Wainwright, P.C., Price, S.A. & Tornabee, L.
(2022) Alternating regimes of shallow and deep diversification in marine fishes. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Science 119 (43), p.e2123544119
Hodge, J. R* & Price, S.A. (2022) Biotic interactions and the future of fishes on coral reefs:
the importance of trait-based approaches. Integrative and Comparative Biology 62(6), 1734-1747
Price, S.A., Friedman, S.T., Corn, K.A., Larouche, O*, Brockelsby, K$, Lee, A.J$, Nagaraj,
M$, Bertrand, N.G., Danao, M$, Coyne, M.C$, Estrada, J.R.$, Friedman, R.$, Hoeft, E.$, Iwan,
M+, Gross, D. +, Kao, J.H$., Landry, B.$, Linares, M.J.$, McGlinn, C. +, Nguyen, J.A.$, Proffitt,
A.G.$, Rodriguez, S.+, Rupp, M.R., Shen, E.Y.$, Susman, V.$, Tovar, A.J.$, Vary, L.L.J.$, Zapfe,
K.L.# & Wainwright, P.C. (2022) FishShapes v1: functionally relevant measurements of teleost
shape and size on three dimensions. Ecology 103(12), e3829
Alencar, L.R.V*, Hodge, J. R.*, Friedman, S.T., Wainwright, P.C. & Price, S.A. (2022) Size
as a complex trait and the scaling relationships of its components across teleost fishes.
Evolutionary Ecology 36, 471–487.
. Larouche, O.*, Alencar, Laura R. V. *, Hodge, J.R.*, Camper, B.+, Adams, D. S.#, Zapfe, Z.#,
Friedman, S. T., Wainwright, P. C., and Price, S. A. (2020) Do key innovations unlock
diversification? A case-study on the morphological and ecological impact of pharyngognathy in
acanthomorph fishes. Current Zoology 66(5), pp.575-588
+Clemson undergraduate students working in my lab #Clemson graduate students
working in my lab *Clemson postdoctoral researchers working in my lab
