A Week in the Life is a new GEEB initiative designed as a way of getting to know our fellow members. We often see information about our department, lab, and project through official mediums, whether a lab or department website. However, what do GEEB members actually do on an average day? What do they do in their free time? This is what we want to know. Tell other GEEB members what an average day consists of. Let them know about that sweet podcast you like listening to or what your favorite place for lunch is. Do you have an event coming up? Let them know too. Join us and get to know our fellow GEEBers!
Ingrid is a fourth year PhD candidate from Plant Biology working in Surangi Punyasena’s lab. She works in palynology (study of pollen, spores and dinoflagellates) to understand past environmental changes. Her research is focused on studying fossil records from northern South America to understand the impact that geological and climatic events had on the Neotropics, and to evaluate how plant communities responded to these changes.
Miles is a sixth year PhD candidate in PEEC and working in the Bell Lab. He is interested in animal cognition and his dissertation focuses on the measurement of individual and population-level variation in cognitive performance in threespined stickleback. More specifically, he is examining the mechanisms driving variation in behavioral flexibility.
Toniann is a 2nd year Master’s student from NRES working in Dr. Cory Suski’s Fish Physiology Lab. She studies fish behavior and stress physiology as predictors of hook-and-line capture of largemouth bass. Her focus is on the environmental interactions of these traits to determine which individual fish are likely to be captured through angling.
Lauren is a 1st year Masters Student from Animal Biology working in the Fuller Lab. Her research focuses on understanding how fish have adapted to different levels of salinity (salt), primarily using the rainwater killifish Lucania parva.
Hannah is a 2nd year PhD Student from Animal Biology working in the Anderson Lab. Her research focuses on the functional morphology and biomechanics of salamander skulls. She uses a combination of materials testing and computer modeling to explore the mechanical demands of feeding in aquatic and terrestrial taxa.
Alex is a 1st year Master’s student from Plant Biology, working with the Heath and Marshall-Colon labs. His research focuses on the evolution of partner quality variation in the legume-rhizobium mutualism. This type of mutualism can have variable effects on the host, ranging from highly beneficial to detrimental. Alex is using population genomics to parse out how that variation persists in natural systems.
Jennifer is a 6th year PhD student (recently defended!) from PEEC working in the Dalling and Heath Labs. Her research focuses on how fungal and bacterial communities influence ecosystem nutrient and carbon cycles. For her dissertation, she studied how environmental conditions, wood characteristics, and fungal and bacterial communities interact to influence wood decay rate.
Selina is a 7th year PhD candidate in PEEC working in the Suarez lab. Her research focuses on ant-mediated seed dispersal in the Neotropics. She is describing patterns in seed removal of seed species that do not provide the typical food reward to ant species, investigating the chemical mechanism that promotes this ant-seed interaction, and the short-term seed fate consequences of these interactions.
Sam is a 5th year PhD candidate (recently defended!) from PEEC working in James Miller’s Lab. Her work focuses on using computational approaches to understand biodiversity-disease relationship in regard to the vector-borne disease, Lyme disease.
Michael is a 4th year PhD student from PEEC working in the Suarez Lab. His research focuses on the evolution of the worker caste in ants. He studies why some species have workers that vary in size while others don’t.
