As a first year undergraduate student in 2019, I applied to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History NHRE REU program which is sponsored by NSF.

I worked under Dr. Karen Osborn in the Invertebrate Zoology Department. She studies the evolution of open ocean (pelagic) invertebrates.

I studied Hyperiid amphipods, relatives of the terrestrial sand fleas or beach hoppers, and their extraordinary eyes. I found that their large eyes don't always correspond with equally large brains unlike other animals with similar eye adaptations.

Want to know more! See this paper by Chan Lin and Karen Osborn, my project supervisors.

I began working at the museum shortly before they revealed the new fossil hall in 2019! I was given the opportunity to attend a pre-opening event for staff outside of regular museum hours.

My NHRE cohort and I (kneeling, bottom right).

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, I was accepted into the MBL's REU program for 2020. I was invited for Summer 2021 after the laboratory was re-opened for research operations.

I worked under Dr. Javier Lloret at the Ecosystems Center. He studies the effects of human disturbance on coastal wetlands and estuaries.

Using data from long-term experimental plots, I measured changes in the coverage of different plant species over 20 years. These plants were treated with nitrogen and phosphorus by MBL scientists and photographed using drones.

Want to know more! Keep an eye out for an upcoming publication from Javier, that includes the data I collected.

Woods Hole marina near the Marine Biological Laboratory.

Cliffs off Martha's Vineyard. My cohort went on a weekend trip to explore the island!

I joined the Witman Lab as a second year at Brown University. Dr. Jon Witman studies marine community ecology in the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador and Cashes Ledge in Maine, USA.

During my time in the lab, I tracked barnacle recruitment, tracked behavioral interactions between damselfish, and built a demographic model to predict how the El Nino Southern Oscillation has impacted and will impact the spread of an invasive sun coral.

As part of my honors thesis, I found that sun coral populations often grow during El Nino years. They have a surprisingly high thermal tolerance and rapidly spread when other species begin to die from the heat.

The Witman lab continues to produce awesome research! Check out their website for updates.

Sun coral (Tubastrea coccinea) closed and open. Open corals use their tentacles to feed. They do not have any symbionts and can survive in places without light! This cool trick allows them to live on artificial structures such as oil platforms, which contributed to their dispersal in the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil.

After I graduated from Brown University, I worked for the Alaska Science Center in Anchorage, AK.

I helped created digital maps of aerial surveys from the early 1990s to the present that counted the number of sea otters and pups in Prince William Sound, AK. The Prince William Sound sea otter population was decimated by the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in 1989 and has been monitored for recovery ever since.

I also helped create digital maps for Kenai Fjords National Park, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, and Katmai National Park and Preserve. I compared the use of aerial surveys and boat-based surveys to assess sea otter populations and found that sea otter counts differ between survey methods (more sea otters are spotted by plane), but trends in sea otter populations follow the same pattern (increasing, stable, or declining). As such, the two methods are complimentary! And can be used by regulatory agencies to accurately measure population status.

Learn more about sea otters in Alaska and the Nearshore Marine Ecosystem Research Program here!

Somewhere between Seward and Homer, AK. My team stopped to count sea otters from this cliff!

Me and the telescope we used to observe sea otters from shore. We counted the number of sea otters, pups, whether they were male or female, and their behavior. More often than not, the sea otters would be resting but we also saw several foraging for sea stars, mussels, crabs, and clams.

I began my PhD at Stanford University in the Fall of 2023. I'm a student in Molly Schumer's lab. Our lab studies speciation, hybridization, and adaptation in swordtail fishes (Xiphophorus). Swordtails are a small freshwater fish endemic to the Sierra Madre Oriental in eastern Mexico. They have internal fertilization, internal development, and live birth.

I am currently working on three projects:

1. How does mitochondrial dysfunction impact the physiology of individuals from different hybrid backgrounds?

Hybrids with a X. malinche mitochondrial genome and X. birchmanni nuclear genome fail to thrive. One negative genetic interaction results in stalled development and another is associated with heart defects and decreased body size.

See Moran et al. 2024 for additional information on the genetics underlying mitochondrial dysfunction in swordtail hybrids.

2. How does malignant melanoma affect the fitness of hybrid swordtails?

Hybrids with xmrk, an oncogene associated with several pigmentation patterns in Xiphophorus, that lack the corresponding repressor develop malignant melanoma. Pigmentation patterns, such as tail and body spots, grow continuously creating three-dimensional tumors that may impact swimming performance and energy requirements. Spots are highly attractive to swordtail fish females and melanoma may also provide some benefit by increasing a male's reproductive success by producing larger spots.

See Powell et al. 2020 for additional information on the genetics underlying malignant melanoma in swordtail hybrids.

3. How do differences in maternal nutrient provisioning contribute to inviable hybrid offspring?

Hybrids with a X. birchmanni mother and a X. malinche father are stillborn or born prematurely. X. malinche are the only swordtail known to provision embryos during development while the remaining species rely on the embryo's yolk for nutrition. These differences in reproductive strategy may play a role in embryo mortality. Hybrid embryos may require additional nutrition not provided by X. birchmanni.

Downloadable PDF of my mitochondrial dysfunction poster, BAPG 2024.

Downloadable PDF of my maternal nutrient provisioning poster, SSE and SMBE 2024.

Hybrid swordtail embryo with a compatible mitochondrial and nuclear genome (left). Sibling with incompatible mitochondrial and nuclear genome (right).

Xiphophorus birchmanni

Xiphophorus malinche

Hybrid with melanoma