Čapek group - Aquatic Eco-Evo-Devo Lab, starting September 2026

Most aquatic embryos develop externally and are directly exposed to fluctuating environmental conditions. Yet, early development—driven by cell proliferation, cell fate specification, and morphogenetic cell movements—must proceed with remarkable precision. These processes are controlled by intracellular dynamics and intercellular signalling systems that need to either buffer environmental variation or scale with it.

Our research addresses how such robustness emerges, with a particular focus on temperature. Teleost fish, the largest vertebrate group, have adapted to a wide range of thermal environments, making them an ideal system to study the evolution of developmental resilience. At the same time, rapid environmental change is pushing many species toward their physiological limits, highlighting the importance of understanding the mechanisms that ensure—or constrain—developmental stability.

We primarily work with the genetically tractable model systems zebrafish and Japanese medaka, combining comparative embryology with evolutionary perspectives. These species share key experimental advantages, including external and transparent development, yet diverged over 100 million years ago and occupy distinct thermal niches. In addition, we extend our work to non-model species from the North Sea to capture natural variation in environmental adaptation.

Our approach

We combine multi-scale experimental and computational approaches to link phenotype, ecotype, mechanism, and evolution:

• AI-assisted phenomics
  High-throughput brightfield imaging combined with deep learning enables quantitative, time-resolved phenotyping of whole embryos across environmental conditions. 
• Molecular and cellular imaging
  Advanced fluorescence microscopy (including confocal, spinning disk, and light-sheet imaging) allows us to resolve signalling dynamics and cell behaviours in vivo. 
• Biophysical analysis
  Techniques such as FRAP, FDAP, and FCS provide quantitative insights into molecular mobility, interactions, and signalling kinetics. 
• Genetics and genomics
  CRISPR-based genome engineering, together with bulk and single-cell transcriptomics and population-level approaches (e.g. GWAS), links phenotypic variation to underlying genetic and regulatory mechanisms. 
• Theory and modelling
  Mathematical and biophysical models are used to identify principles of scaling, robustness, and environmental sensitivity in developmental systems.

Research directions

• Mechanisms of robustness in developmental signalling networks 
• Evolution of thermal resilience across fish species 
• Identification of vulnerable and resilient developmental processes under environmental stress