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Research
Broadly, I specialize in the use of biological imaging methods and comparative analyses to explore the functional role of diversity in anatomical systems in fishes. I am currently working on the three chapters of my dissertation, which address 1) Behavioral diversity in reef fish and the relationships between body shape and swimming, 2) Evolution of fish fin anatomy and functional consequences of fin shape diversity, and 3) Evolutionary and functional integration of fish locomotor and feeding systems. Additionally, I'm working on a side project exploring behavioral diversity in damselfish, and the internal musculoskeletal variation that supports unique swimming styles through CT scanning and in situ video. My Biological Imaging Portfolio can be found on my Portfolio Page!
For many decades, body shape has been thought of as the strongest predictor of swimming diversity among fish. Classically, it is taught and passed down in the literature on fish behavior that tuna-like fish are high-speed, endurance swimming fish, and compressed fish that are disk-shaped, like a butterflyfish, are well adapted for making fine-scale maneuvers. In lab studies, these proposed relationships between body design and swimming are only sometimes supported and the first chapter of my dissertation is the first study to address these long-held hypotheses in the wild. I measured routine swimming speed and distance, turning frequency, and periods of rest versus activity in 3 dimensions using stereo-video for 48 species from 16 families of reef fish and found no evidence that body shape can be reliably used to predict swimming behaviors. This study is published in Functional Ecology.
To understand how fine-scale variation in anatomy may map to swimming diversity, the next chapter of my dissertation will be comparing swimming behaviors within a single, but incredibly ecologically diverse, family of reef fishes, the damselfish (pomacentridae). In April 2024, I collected 80 hours of stereo video of 10 species of carribbean dameslfish in Bonaire. While the videos in my first chapter were digitized manually, I hope to use machine learning tools to process my new batch of damselfish videos for behavioral variation. I will also be CT scanning these damselfish species, as well as others from accross the reef fish phylogeny to describe musculoskelteal variation in the pectoral girdle. I can then determine if this locomotor anatomical variation is related to the diversity in swimming behaviors and ecologies of damselfish.
I am also working to describe diversity in fin shape and to determine evolutionary correlations between fin shapes, feeding ecology, mode of locomotion, and body shape. Thus far I have photographed and measured the shape of the pectoral, dorsal, caudal, and anal fins for 345 specimens of 110 species of cleared and stained coral reef fish. Preliminarily we are finding that fin shape variation does not map well with diversity in mode of locomotion such as body caudal fin versus median paired fin swiming. While functional, developmental, and genetic pathways all have the potential to endure strong evolutionary integration between fins we are finding that fins are not strongly evolutionarily correlated and evolve with a large degree of independence.
I completed my master's thesis in 2019 with Dr. Darren Johnson at California State University, Long Beach. Here I studied local adaptation in behavior in response to moderate spatial differences in spearfishing pressure. This project involved over 100 hours of diving to collect pregnant black surfperch. Their offspring were born in the lab in a classic common garden design. The shared environmental conditions allowed me to evaluate inherited behavioral differences among offspring from different populations. The success of this project was particularly exciting as it is typically challenging to measure local adaptation in marine fish given high gene flow and the challenges of achieving offspring birth in lab environments. Surfperch are livebearers with high site fidelity and are the perfect candidate for addressing local adaptation in behavior. We found substantial differences in how reactive offspring were to risk and that behaviors were correlated with spearfishing risk at their source population. This paper is published in Oecologia: read it here!
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This paper is published in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology: read it here! This project has inspired my interest in developing socioeconomic research skills so that I can continue to utilize social data in my future studies.
My work with black surfperch began on Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles. While I was working with Dr. Mark Steele at California State University, Northridge. Here I measured courtship success and found a strong tendency toward size assortative mating. I also looked at differences in trade-offs made between foraging and courtship effort for males and females over a range of sizes. The study demonstrated that young males allocate energy differently than older males or females. This paper is published in the Journal of Fish Biology: read it here!
In addition to my larger projects, I have a special place in my heart for elasmobranchs and have had the pleasure of participating in a lot of really fun and exciting fieldwork trips. I am a volunteer diver at the Aquarium of the Bay, where I dive in the Sharks of Alcatraz Exhibit. I'm also a volunteer scientific diver with the California State University, Long Beach Shark Lab. These dives are a blast; we clean and exchange data loggers and buoys that constantly receive transmissions from tagged white sharks. I spent the summer of 2014 in Hawaii long-lining and tagging shark pups with The University of Hawaii, sharks and rays ecology course. I highly recommend this course for those interested in shark work.
The precursor to my master's thesis was a project conducted by the entire Johnson Lab. We had observed a high degree of demographic variation among populations of black surfperch. Otolith measurements were used to generate a dataset with the age distributions and growth rates for populations of black surfperch spanning the coast of California. We measured population density, predator abundance, and prey availability as potential predictors of spatial variation in demography. However, none of these variables were related to age structure or growth rates. Instead, we found a strong relationship between spearfishing pressure and demographic rates.
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