May 10, 2019
My paper with Nick Long (Dickinson College undergraduate) is out in the Journal of Fish Biology! It’s titled “Enormous gill chambers of deep‐sea coffinfishes (Lophiiformes: Chaunacidae) support unique ventilatory specializations such as breath holding and extreme inflation” (we went for a descriptive title). Here’s a link to the paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jfb.14003
Like all coffinfishes (Family Chaunacidae), this deep sea Chaunacops coloratus has two enormous gill chambers on either side of the head that can hold a huge volume of water. The fish inflates by ~30% body volume, and then it holds its breath until it is ready to exhale.
April 20, 2019
My symposium paper has been published online! Our symposium papers will appear together in the August issue of Integrative and Comparative Biology, but you don’t have to wait until then to read it. Here is the link: https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icz022
January 6, 2019
I am co-organizing a symposium for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Annual meeting today! Alexus Roberts, Katherine Corn, and Kelsie Pos are live-tweeting — follow them for updates. Here is a link to our webpage: http://www.sicb.org/meetings/2019/symposia/multi.php
2018
December 19, 2018
The NSF REU grant to Friday Harbor Laboratories has been funded! As Co-PI, I will be helping with administration and mentoring. Interested in applying for Summer 2019? Here is a link with more information: https://fhl.uw.edu/research/student-financial-aid-for-research/summer-research-internships/
December 10, 2018
Another NSF REU paper published in 2018! This one is by current Wake Forest University graduate student Noah Bressman, along with NAU professor Alice Gibb. Here’s a link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0944200618301223
September 15, 2018
My paper with Katherine Corn, Adam Summers, and Alice Gibb is out in Journal of Experimental Biology, also Katherine’s NSF REU project! Here’s a link: http://jeb.biologists.org/content/221/18/jeb176131.abstract
August 3, 2018
My paper with UC Davis graduate student Alexus Roberts is out in Zoology! This was her NSF REU project while she was an undergraduate working at Friday Harbor Labs. Here is a link to the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0944200617302301
May 2, 2018
I have accepted a new position as an Assistant Professor at Howard University in the Department of Biology! I start in August, 2018, teaching Comparative Anatomy.
2017
August 5, 2017
I'm in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, giving an invited symposium talk entitled Cutting-edge teaching at the edge of the ocean: the role of field courses in reforming physiology education at the International Congress of Physiological Sciences. Tonight, I head to Armação dos Búzios for a three-day teaching congress complementary to this meeting, at which I'll be giving a workshop on using 3D models in physiology classrooms and labs!
July 17, 2017
Back at Shoals Marine Lab to teach Anatomy and Function of Marine Vertebrates again! This year, my co-instructor is Dr. Nick Gidmark, an assistant professor at Knox College. We can't wait to meet our new group of students and get started on some exciting student projects!
June 23, 2017
I'm at Evolution 2017! This my first time at Evolution, and I'm excited to be giving a presentation at the Undergraduate Diversity Professional Development Workshop and a poster on functional coupling in the gill ventilation and suction feeding systems of sculpins.
March 7, 2017
I am visiting Friday Harbor Laboratories for the next month helping out with Cornell's CORALS program and the ZooBots research course. The CORALS students and I are working on sculpin gill morphology, and the ZooBots are using micro-CT to study the evolution of snailfish morphology.
January 4, 2017
I'm at the 2017 meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in New Orleans, LA, presenting the latest results of my "virtual fish gills" project!
August 10, 2016
Our shark tooth research, led by Cornell undergraduate Katherine Corn, is now published in the Royal Society's Open Science journal! Check out Katherine's video of the "shark saw" in action!
July 24, 2016
I am thrilled to be teaching Anatomy and Function of Marine Vertebrates at Shoals Marine Laboratory! My co-instructor (Malcolm Gordon) and I have been planning for months, and we are looking forward to the next two weeks of field trips, dissections, and student projects.
July 6, 2016
I'm at the 2016 Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists in New Orleans, LA, presenting my "virtual fish gills" project. I'm excited to be returning to JMIH after a couple of years away. Summer is a difficult time of year for me to travel to conferences because of research and teaching in summer programs at marine labs, but I am glad that I could make it for this fantastic meeting!
June 29, 2016
We're at the International Congress of Vertebrate Morphology in Bethesda, MD! This congress meets once every three years to discuss topics ranging from biomechanics to the evolution of morphological phenotypes. I am presenting on my "virtual fish gills" computational fluid dynamics modeling, and Cornell undergraduate Katherine Corn is presenting her NSF REU research on the scaling of flatfish burial mechanics.
February 24, 2016
My paper on gill ventilation in the Goosefish is now available in the journal Zoology! http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S094420061630006X#fx1
Check out one of our videos of a Goosefish exhaling out of its "armpit":
January 5, 2016
We're at SICB 2016 in snowy Portland, OR! I'm presenting on evolutionary morphology of sculpins, using CT reconstructions. Noah Bressman, Katherine Corn, and Alexus Roberts are all presenting their research from their NSF REU internships this summer at Friday Harbor Laboratories. Noah is presenting on terrestrial locomotion in sculpins, Katherine is presenting on burial biomechanics of English Sole, and Alexus is presenting on the evolution of the lower jaw adductor system in sculpins!
November 9, 2015
Gizmodo has written an excellent article on our mummichog locomotion research! http://gizmodo.com/back-flipping-fish-look-before-they-leap-across-land-1741008121
They even featured one of Noah's research videos:
November 5, 2015
Our research on mummichog locomotion has been published online (link)! It will be featured in the Journal of Experimental Zoology Part A: Ecological Genetics and Physiology. This study was conducted by my undergraduate mentee, Noah Bressman, along with our collaborator, Dr. Alice Gibb (website). Noah completed this work at Shoals Marine Laboratory (link), based on his course project from Anatomy and Function of Marine Vertebrates, which is being offered again in Summer 2016 (Click HERE for more info).
October 12, 2015
Our abstracts for SICB 2016 in Portland, OR, have been accepted! I will be giving a talk on the evolutionary morphology of gill ventilation in sculpins (link). I am also a co-author on several projects from the FHL REU 2015 program: Katherine Corn will be giving a talk on size-scaling of burial performance of flatfishes (link). Noah Bressman will be giving a talk on terrestrial locomotion of tidepool sculpins (link). Alexus Roberts will be presenting a poster on the evolution of jaw closing muscles in sculpins (link).
September 19, 2015
I presented at the Festival of Bad ad hoc Hypotheses! Check out the live stream of the entire event HERE. A nicely edited version will be available on the BAHFest Youtube channel soon.
Here's the video from my 2013 presentation: