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Physical & Biological Sciences Division
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Department
Graduate Student
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Graduate
CBB/EE Biology
I study sensory biology, how animals detect environmental signals, how that information is processed, and how the molecular machinery for doing this evolves. My dissertation investigates the evolution of photosensory systems in cnidarians, a lineage that includes both eyeless polyps and animals with true eyes, making it a rare and useful window to compare photosensory systems. Working with an eyeless freshwater polyp Hydra, I use comparative genomics to determine how opsin genes expand through multiple modes of duplication, diverge in sequence, rearrange and reorganize their genes, and express them differently. In the moon jellyfish Aurelia that has eyes and I catalog phototransduction genes and link molecular components to circuit architecture and eventually their light-driven behavior. My projects focus on how genetic variability generates sensory novelty and how that novelty becomes integrated into behavior.
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