Author: kdh73

I am a first-year PhD student in the Vitousek Lab. My research interests include neuroendocrinology, behavioral ecology, and microbial ecology. During my doctoral research, I intend to characterize the impacts of gut microbiome composition on host phenotypic traits vital to stress responsiveness and their fitness consequences. More specifically, I’m interested in the mechanistic links between the gut microbiome and stress-related changes in physiology, behavior, and brain development in tree swallows.

Outside research, I am passionate about public outreach and citizen science efforts. I love to encourage younger generations to confidently pursue a career in STEM by sharing my own experiences with them. I also love hiking, kayaking, and dancing (ballet, jazz, and tap) in my spare time!

I am a first-year graduate student interested in studying anthropogenic stressors on Tree Swallow populations in the Vitousek Lab. With a background in population level ecology, I have become increasingly interested in understanding underlying factors to large scale patterns. By studying across organizational levels, I intend to develop a deeper understanding of how stressors such as light or noise pollution vary within and across populations. I hope to better describe how urbanized landscapes may impact natural communities in a rapidly developing world.

Alongside my research, I work to create a supportive atmosphere for others enduring stress, work-life balance or mental wellness issues. Supportive scientific communities are the strongest. Outside of my work, you can find me pursuing one of one hundred hobbies! I enjoy cooking, reading, playing music and hiking to name a few—focusing on one hobby was never my path.

I am a fourth-year graduate student studying plant-virus interactions in the Power lab. My work considers the impact of environmental change on plant response to viral associations. In order to integrate host adaptation to both variable abiotic conditions and heterogeneous biotic pressures (i.e. the real world), I study a single plant across its’ full known range in the mountains of western North America. I am currently assaying plant populations for viruses in order to build a viral diversity baseline across alpine and montane ecosystems, which may inform predictions regarding future viral range shifts into naïve host populations. In addition, I am also conducting common garden experiments to assess the roles that host genotype and environment play in facilitating the spread of viruses to new plants and environments.

I’m a finishing PhD Candidate in Alex Flecker’s lab. I am interested in drivers of elemental movement through streams, how their cycles interact and how elements are taken up and used by aquatic organisms. I study streams in Ecuador that are contaminated with arsenic as a result of geothermal activity and how nutrient availability in those streams affects how much arsenic is retained in the food web or transported further downstream.  Understanding how arsenic interacts with more common elements (carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus) is important given the prevalence of arsenic (more than 10% of US streams are above the drinking water limit!), and the influence of humans on stream nutrient chemistry from agricultural runoff.

I am a fifth year student in Amy McCune’s lab. I study the evolution of novel phenotypes using comparative developmental genetics. More specifically, I am investigating the evolution of the gas bladder in ray-finned fishes from the lungs of the bony-vertebrate common ancestor. The key morphological difference between these homologous organs is the site of budding from the foregut; the gas bladder buds dorsally and the lungs bud ventrally. Using immunohistochemistry and tissue-specific transcriptomics, I am comparing the gene expression patterns during gas bladder development in bowfin and lung development in bichirs looking for dorsoventral patterning similarities and differences.

I’m a second-year grad student in the Reed Lab and am broadly interested in Evo-Devo–more specifically, how gene regulation contributes to the evolution of animal diversity.

I’m a 2nd year PhD Student in Jeremy Searle’s lab. My research interests lie primarily in the realms of population genetics, speciation, and phylogenetics, especially as they apply to mammals. I’ve previously worked with cows, mammoths, and giant sloths, and I’m currently using house mice to answer questions of chromosome evolution and hybridisation. House mice of the subspecies Mus musculus domesticus occasionally experience chromosome fusions, and mice with different chromosomal rearrangements are able to interbreed with seemingly no detriment, which is unusual. I’m interested in exploring the mechanisms that generate and govern these rearrangements, what they mean for the genetic diversity of house mice, and the degree to which chromosomal variation is driving speciation in these mice.