Efrat Gavish-Regev

is an evolutionary biologist, systematist, and arachnologist at the National Natural History Collections (NNHC), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is a field biologist with over 25 years of experience, interested in understanding the roles of evolution, ecology, and biogeography in shaping Earth’s biodiversity. She is a member of the International Society for Subterranean Biology. Over the past decade, she and her lab members have been studying the ecology, evolutionary development, and historical biogeography of Levantine cave arachnids and isopods. Their work includes the description of more than 10 troglophile and troglobite arachnid species new to science. Her lab conducts multidisciplinary research – including morphology, molecular phylogeny, genomics, EvoDevo, molecular gut analysis, and stable isotope studies – to unravel the origins of cave fauna, investigate the mechanisms of eye reduction and loss, examine cave assemblages and food-web composition, and support the conservation of cave-dwelling species.