Functional Morphology of Domestic Dogs and Cats
How artificial selection reshapes the relationship between form and function — and what that means for animal welfare.
Stella Venn
PhD Student in Evolutionary Biology · Washington University in St. Louis
I am a PhD student studying evolutionary biology at Washington University in St. Louis, where I am coadvised by Jonathan Losos and Andreas Kautt. My work uses domestic dogs and cats as a system to understand how artificial selection reshapes the relationship between form and function. More broadly, I'm interested in what domesticated species can reveal about morphological diversity, the dynamics of domestication, and evolutionary processes more generally.
I received my undergraduate degree from Rhodes College in Memphis, where I studied brachycephaly in domestic dogs in the Shapes and Scales Lab. I also worked in the Boyle Lab, where I studied the spatiotemporal behavioral patterns of zoo-living elephants.
