Current Students
|
Leighanne Sparks joined the lab in the fall of 2023. She is interested in reptile thermal physiology and behavior. |
Mahaut
Sorlin (PhD student) |
Mahaut's
dissertation work integrates physiology, behavior, and performance with
a general focus on cognition and brains. In addition to
experimentally investigating links between locomotor training and brain
size/mitochondrial function in green anoles, she has also tested for
the role of behavioral flexibility in facilitating the spread of brown
anoles through the southeastern US over the last several decades.
Mahaut previously participated in studies looking at the effect of
hypoxia on
performance and hysiological traits in wall lizards and how water
restriction
impacts reproduction in viviparous lizards. She claims to be French,
but suspiciously has lived primarily in the US for the last 10 years.
|
Hall of Fame
Fadeke Adeola
(PhD 2023) |
Fadeke
joined the lab as an undergraduate and defended her PhD dissertation in
2023. She worked on the factors affecting male coercive ability and
female
mating resistance. She manipulating biogenic amines, primarily
octopamine, in male and female house crickets (Acheta domesticus)
and measured how the resultant changes in performance and behavior
during mating affect both male calls and mating interactions between
males and females. She has also looked at the effects of antennae loss
on longevity, physiology, and aggression in A. domesticus and Teleogryllus commodus. Fadeke was recently spotted in Australia and is currently at large.
|
Jamie
Marks (PhD 2022) |
Jamie
studied the effects of the maternal environment on hepatic expression
of IGF1
and IGF2 in
green anoles. She found that IGF2,
which in humans and mice is not expressed postnatally, is not only
expressed at higher rates compared to IGF1
in adult female green anoles, but these two genes also show different
expression patterns in response to variation in the maternal energetic
environment. In addition, two other genes (involved in protein and
carbohydrate metabolism respectively) that are commonly used as
housekeeping genes in mice also vary their expression patterns
in
green anole lizards. Finally, Jamie showed that the maternal
energetic state affects both egg and hatchling phenotypes. She is currently a postdoc at Michigan State University.
|
 
Gina Zwicky (MSc 2022) |
Gina
tested for spatial and temporal effects of malaria infection in Anolis sabanus
on the Caribbean island of Saba. In addition to doing all of her
research during the COVID pandemic, she also solved the mystery of
constant and repeated DNA contamination that she traced back to a gecko
living in a fume hood. |
Annie Cespedes
(PhD 2017) |
Annie's
dissertation work tested how trade-offs and constraints
affect the evolution of performance and adaptive functional morphology.
In addition to empirical work on performance in butterflies
and lizards, Annie also developed quantitative genetic models
to simulate performance evolution in
response to the interplay between trade-offs, genetic constraints, and
selection on multiple performance capacities. These simulation models
show that individuals performing at variable, sub-maximal speeds experience less intense selection
than those that never deviate from maximum performance. |
David Weber (MSc 2016) |
For
his thesis work David reconstructed the genetic and spatial
relationships among members of a local population of green
anole lizards and tested whether those individuals arrange themselves
in the environment with regard to the size and/or relatedness of their
neighbors. David went on to earn his PhD from the University of
Maryland. |
Catie Policastro (MSc 2013) |
Catie
tested whether the stereotyped A, B, and C displays
of green
anoles are context-specific by presenting anoles with different stimuli
and measuring whether there any differencies in the frequencies of
displays elicited by those stimuli. |
|
|
