Kubicek brings global science into the classroom

On a shelf in Dr. Kole Kubicek's office sits a small, translucent fish, its skeleton stained blue and red, suspended in liquid like a specimen from another century. To the untrained eye, it looks strange, even unsettling. To Kubicek, it is perfectly ordinary and deeply revealing.

"I don't really think of things as weird anymore," he said. "You just accept them as they are."

Kubicek, an assistant professor of biology at Lamar University and a comparative anatomist who studies the development and evolution of fishes, is not prone to grand pronouncements. Soft-spoken and self-effacing, he tends to deflect attention away from himself and back toward his subjects: catfishes with venomous spines, larval flounders whose eyes migrate across their skulls, skeletons that twist and transform as animals grow. If pressed to describe himself, he shrugs. He is laid-back. He likes being outdoors. He likes fish.

He has always liked fish.

Growing up in Wharton, Texas, a town halfway between Houston and Victoria, Kubicek found himself drawn to aquariums wherever he encountered them, including the obligatory fish tanks in doctors' offices. Later came fishing trips on the Texas coast, then his first home aquarium around age 10, and eventually a moment that still stands out: watching his brother pull flathead catfish from the Colorado River and realizing, to his own surprise, that he was no longer afraid to touch them.

"That kind of opened everything back up," he said. "I could hold it. I could look at it. And I realized this is what I want to do."

At first, he imagined a career with Texas Parks and Wildlife. Like many students, he arrived at college without a clear map of the scientific landscape. At Texas A&M University, he enrolled in wildlife and fisheries sciences, assuming management and conservation were the natural destinations. Then, in the same semester, he took two courses that changed everything-one by boring him, the other by inspiring him.

The fisheries management course, he said plainly, was "one of the worst classes I ever took." The professor was knowledgeable but disorganized; the subject matter left him cold. But ichthyology-the study of fishes-did the opposite. Taught by an enthusiastic systematist, the course opened Kubicek's eyes to a staggering truth: there are more than 36,000 species of fish, roughly equal to all amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals combined.

"That diversity," he said, "that's what hooked me."

He stayed. First as an undergraduate researcher, then for a master's degree, then a Ph.D., all at Texas A&M. Somewhere along the way, he became what he still calls himself today: a comparative anatomist first, a fish biologist second. His work focuses on morphology-the study of form-and development, particularly how complex skeletal structures emerge from larvae that, early on, look nearly identical across species.

"If you look at something really bizarre as an adult," he said, "early in development, it looks just like everything else."

Sameness and difference run through much of Kubicek's research. He has spent years studying the pectoral-fin spines of catfishes, the sharp, venom-associated structures that make them infamous among anglers. No other fishes have anything quite like them. By tracing how these spines develop and comparing them to similar structures in other species, Kubicek investigates questions of homology: what counts as the same structure, evolutionarily speaking, and what does not.

In other projects, he documents the full skeletal development of fishes bone by bone, from the first ossification to the last. It is painstaking work, requiring hundreds of specimens and an unusual amount of patience. "It takes a lot of time," he said, "but once you have it, you can really compare across species in a meaningful way."

At Lamar University, where Kubicek has been on the faculty for just over three years, his research has expanded in new directions. In collaboration with Dr. Hoch, a colleague in the department, he has worked on fisheries surveys around Pleasure Island, examining whether dredge compartments might serve as nursery habitats for young fish. The project required extensive fieldwork and student labor.

Kubicek lights up when talking about his students. Over the course of the Pleasure Island work, eight or nine undergraduates participated, learning standardized Texas Parks and Wildlife sampling methods while getting paid to do field research. Other students have joined him in the lab for course credit, helping refine long-standing anatomical techniques such as clearing and double staining, a method developed decades ago that renders tissues transparent while coloring bone red and cartilage blue.

"I've ruined a lot of larval fishes over the years," Kubicek said, describing the trial-and-error process of adjusting acidic stains that can accidentally dissolve bone. One student became so invested in improving the protocol that she successfully applied for an undergraduate research grant to pursue it further. Kubicek now plans to publish a comprehensive review of the method.

Teaching, like research, is rooted in comparison. While Kubicek also teaches ichthyology, his favorite course has become comparative anatomy. In lab, students dissect dogfish sharks and domestic cats, moving organ system by organ system, species by species. The reactions are predictable: students are unfazed by sharks, deeply uneasy about cats.

"It feels personal," he said. "But once they get inside andstartstart looking, they forget they were ever worried."

Kubicek's research life extends well beyond Texas. He continues to collaborate with his former advisor and international colleagues, including researchers in Germany and the United Kingdom. He is currently working on the formal description of two species of catfish from Nepal which was identified not in the field, but in museum collections, and on long-term studies of developmental anatomy using rare specimens spawned in aquaria abroad. This December, he plans to travel to Germany, where his wife, also a scientist, is completing a postdoctoral fellowship.

Kubicek is currently working on several research efforts, including larval fish surveys in Southeast Texas, aquarium-based studies focused on skeletal development, and collaborative species descriptions using museum collections.

At Lamar University, he involves undergraduate and graduate students in both field and laboratory research, providing training in sampling methods, specimen preparation and anatomical analysis. Much of the work requires extended timelines and detailed documentation, constraints Kubicek said are inherent to the study of development and morphology.