On May 17, 2023, Helena gave a talk entitled "Cave animals, models for understanding various aspects of evolution". She presented two main research topics from our lab. The first one is loss of pigmentation, a classic phenotype of cave dwellers that has evolved convergently across animal groups with various pigments. The second one is the process of cave colonization, in which darkness can lead to the rapid induction of traits in surface ancestors, many of which resemble the adaptive phenotypes of obligate cave dwellers.