Darien Satterfield

I'm a postdoctoral researcher at Florida Atlantic University studying behavioral decision-making and kinematics in shark schooling networks and reef fishes. I am working with Dr. Marianne Porter and Dr. Ashkaan Fahimipour. We use computer vision (A.I. tracking) to characterize the movement patterns of sharks and reef fishes.

 

I completed my  Ph.D at UC Davis working with Dr. Peter Wainwright. My dissertation explored the relationships between behavior, functional morphology, and evolutionary patterns in reef fishes. I found that swimming behaviors are not easily predicted by body design, and that fin morphology is only faintly reflective of the style of locomotion fish use regularly. I also describe that there are many weak to moderate axes of evolutionary covariation in the fins, body, and jaws of reef fishes. My analyses show that the presence of mildly integrated morphological axes is essential to the evolution of diverse extreme morphologies in reef fishes. 

​

 I completed my master's research at California State University, Long Beach, studying behavioral local adaptation in fish to predation. During my undergraduate program at California State University, Northridge, I studied courtship success and foraging trade-offs in fish. Information about these projects and updates on my current work can be found in this page's "Research" tab. You can contact me at Dsatterfield@fau.edu