The visionary leader served the campus as vice chancellor of medical sciences and dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA from 1994 to 2010.
The findings have implications for the conservation of rare and endangered species, in which low genetic diversity could increase the odds of extinction.
“Today’s rich biodiversity among marine fish shows the fingerprints of the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period,” said Michael Alfaro, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.