Research
Our Research
The Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard is a center for research and education focused on the comparative relationships of animal life, with applications beyond traditional museum science.
MCZ Curators are Harvard professors whose research applies to industry, medicine, robotics, navigation, evolution, and biodiversity.
Biodiversity—the richness and variety of life on Earth—serves as inspiration for solutions to address pressing societal challenges in fields as diverse as biomedicine, engineering, conservation and industry.
Biomedical Impact
From killing to curing -Venomous mollusks and the path to medicine
Researchers in the Mandë Holford lab are using a comparative interdisciplinary approach combing evolution and chemical ecology to examine how venoms evolve, develop, and function over time, and how we can use this knowledge as a roadmap for discovering and characterizing compounds that will inform advances in foundational and translation research pertaining to cellular physiology and drug discovery.
Learning how animals regenerate to inform human medical advances
MCZ researchers in the Mansi Srivastava lab work with the three-banded panther worm that can regrow whole organs—including entirely new brains—to uncover the genetic pathways for this impressive regeneration capability. The U.S. National Institutes of Health has funded this vital research with implications for human health.
Exploring the energy costs of regeneration
George Lauder and Jessica Whited at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute are leading research on the metabolic changes that occur during limb regeneration in axolotls to quantify the energy expended to regrow a limb.
Evolutionary Studies
How birds develop disease resistance
Research in the Scott Edwards lab utilized decades of DNA samples from bird specimens in our collection to observe how House Finches evolved disease resistance over time.
The use of long-read sequencing and pangenomic approaches in a wild bird population, led by Postdoctoral Fellow Bohao Fang, presents a compelling approach to understanding the complexities of molecular ecology and adaptive evolution.
Investigating velvet worm dispersal across the Caribbean
Mosquito ecology
Animal evolution 500 million years in the making
The Museum of Comparative Zoology houses the largest collection worldwide of exceptionally preserved soft-bodied Marjum fossils from Utah. This unique deep marine deposit contains key evidence of early animal life over 500 million years old, and represents the most diverse and abundant fossil biota of its kind in the entire United States.
Discoveries hiding in collections
A fossil in our collections was identified as a caterpillar in 1865 but is now recognized as the first-known non-marine lobopodian and the earliest one ever discovered. Lobopodians are extinct, soft-bodied creatures that bridge the evolutionary gap between a primitive worm-like ancestor and modern arthropods like insects and crustaceans.
Biomechanics & Design
Computational simulations bridging evolutionary biology and robotics
In Stephanie Pierce's lab, researchers fuse Darwinian evolution, Newtonian mechanics, and optimization theory to build computational simulations of animal behavior in both living and extinct species. Originating in biomedical engineering and aerospace, this framework has been repurposed and expanded to predict whole-organism performance—such as running speed and walking efficiency.
These simulations mark a watershed for evolutionary biology, enabling quantitative reconstructions of extinct organisms and rigorous tests of the drivers behind major evolutionary transitions. The same pipelines are catalyzing agile, bio-inspired robots that translate nature’s solutions into real technology. The work has received sustained support from the National Science Foundation.
Studying fish to improve robots and aircraft
For decades, George Lauder has directed research on meticulously engineered robots that replicate how fish swim to better understand the mechanisms behind speed and agility. His lab also studies the structure of shark skin to understand its hydrodynamic properties.
Together, this research can lead to more efficient underwater robots, more aerodynamic aircraft, and robots that mimic real-life movements. It has received funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation.
Photo illustration courtesy of James Weaver
Climate Change
Transforming cooling technologies through butterfly wing research
Members of Naomi Pierce's lab have been studying the reflectances of scales on butterfly wings to understand how they regulate temperature. They have discovered nanostructures that regulate heat and light, providing blueprints for energy-saving materials, sustainable building design, and next-generation optics.
