The ability to halt reproduction in response to physiological stress has been seen in females from fruit flies to mammals (including humans). Organisms may pause the development and maturation of the egg (oogenesis) to conserve energy. Eusocial insects are paramount models of ecological success because of a sterile female worker caste that maintains the colony, protects the reproductive caste (queen), and cares for her brood. Adult female reproductive plasticity is necessary to form reproductive castes. The cellular biology that maintains sterility and promotes ovary development in these reproductive castes is unknown. How females temporarily pause oogenesis is not well understood outside the model fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. To observe these responses, female fruit flies need to be starved or placed in heat stress. This leaves the question of whether what is seen in fruit flies applies universally. Also, whether different environmental stimuli can trigger different cellular pathways to pause oogenesis. The primitively eusocial paper wasp, Polistes, serves as an optimal model to study caste-dependent sterility because of its minimal morphological differences between castes, the ability for workers to replace the queen, and the body of literature that has identified the different environmental stimuli that create the castes. I am using immunohistochemistry and immunostaining to visualize cellular structures and processes important for egg development (oogenesis) in the different reproductive castes of the primitively eusocial paper wasp, Polistes exclamans.

I am a 4th-year PhD candidate in biology at Drexel University. I am co-advised by Dr. Sean O'Donnell and Dr. Kari Lenhart. The O'Donnell lab's focus is on the behavior, neurohistology, and morphology between and among castes of eusocial insects. The Lenhart lab is a developmental biology lab that uses the fruit fly testis as a model to understand stem cell differentiation. Beyond my thesis work, I am also working on a side project to identify where in the lineage of Hymenoptera, do certain order-specific traits of oogenesis appear. Throughout my four years in the program, I have mentored multiple undergraduate students. Furthermore, I have been a teaching assistant for several biology labs: microbiology, general biology, intro to biology for non-majors, and vertebrate anatomy.

My lab investigates how human-induced rapid environmental changes influence the physiology, morphology, and behavior of wild vertebrates. Our field-based, interdisciplinary research approach addresses mechanistic, ecological, and conservation questions to advance our understanding of the consequences of anthropogenic changes, like introduced species and climate change. Our recent focus has been on how emerging and spreading diseases are linked to measures of physiology and behavior in wild songbirds.

After earning my Master's in Biology at the Paris Ecole Normal Supérieure and Paris University VI, I completed my PhD in Animal Behavior at the University of California Davis. I pursued a postdoctoral position in Dr. Britt Heidinger's lab and am now an Assistant Professor of Biology at California Lutheran University.

My research program explores how abiotic and biotic variables interact to determine the structure of sea urchin and algae populations. I specialize in understanding 1) the interaction between sea urchins and algae under climate change, and 2) the plasticity of the sea urchin adhesion in changing environmental conditions. I have a strong experimental design and biostatistical background and my research approach combine field and laboratory experiments in both intertidal and subtidal environments.

I obtained my undergrad degree in Marine Biology in Chile (I am Chilean). I obtained a scholarship to do a PhD in Biology at Laval University in Quebec, Canada where I worked with the population ecology of sea urchins. I then did a teaching postdoc at Villanova University where I started working on the adhesive system of sea urchins which incorporates biomechanics. I did a second postdoc at the Friday Harbor Laboratory (U. Washington) where I continue studying the adhesive system of sea urchins, but from a ecological perspective.

Developmental physiology. Control of size and shape in development. Polyphenisms. Allometry. Pattern formation.
I do wet-lab research on the above systems. I also do a lot of mathematical modeling of those systems.
In addition, I collaborate with Mike Reed (Duke Mathematcis) in modeling metabolic systems relevant to human health, in which we study the mecahnsism of robustness sand homeostasis.

I have been a Full Professor at Duke University since 1987.

I am broadly interested in the biomechanics of feeding and locomotion with a particular focus on plethodontid salamanders. I have contributed to studies of their ballistic tongue projection performance. The majority of my work has been investigating adhesion, clinging, and climbing in plethodontid salamanders to try to determine what attachment mechanisms they're using, how strong they are, what surfaces they can stick to, and how that might relate to microhabitat choices, climbing kinematics, and morphological variation of bodies, feet, and tails. As a direct result of frequently encountering gravid female timber rattlesnakes at salamander field sites, I have also started studying gravid female behavior and maternal care in timber rattlesnakes to better understand the effects of maternal care (or sometimes, lack thereof) in this species.

I’m an assistant professor in anatomy and physiology at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. I teach human anatomy and physiology courses, as well as an undergraduate comparative biomechanics course, a non-majors human biology course and a first-year seminar in the biology of monsters. My research interests include biomechanics, functional morphology, and physiology of reptiles and amphibians, with a special focus on plethodontid salamanders and their climbing performance. I am also studying timber rattlesnake maternal care using camera trapping.

My research asks when and why evolution is repeatable. Across the history of life, similar biological solutions—such as eyes, color vision, and bioluminescent signals—have evolved many times in distantly related organisms. I study these repeated outcomes to understand how molecular mechanisms, organismal function, and ecological context together shape evolutionary possibilities.
My lab focuses on light-based traits as model systems for this question, including both visual systems and bioluminescent signaling. By integrating comparative genomics, functional assays, phylogenetics, and behavioral and ecological data, we link molecular changes in photoreceptors and luciferases to whole-organism performance, communication, and survival in natural environments.
We work across a broad range of organisms, including cnidarian jellyfish, bioluminescent ostracods, mollusks, and vertebrates. These groups provide natural replicates for testing how similar sensory and signaling functions arise under similar ecological pressures, such as dim light, sexual selection, or predator avoidance.
Together, this research aims to identify general principles that govern evolutionary convergence and constraint: when evolution predictably returns to the same solutions, and when it instead explores novel paths. By connecting genes to organisms to ecosystems, my work seeks to explain how biological information systems evolve and diversify across deep time.

Todd H. Oakley is a Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he also serves as Chair of the department. He received his Ph.D. in Biology from Duke University in 2001 and completed postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago. He joined the UCSB faculty in 2003, where he has developed an interdisciplinary research program integrating molecular evolution, genomics, and sensory biology. Oakley is a recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, recognizing his contributions to evolutionary biology and photobiology. He has trained numerous graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, many of whom now hold academic and research positions in the U.S. and abroad.

I am interested in impacts of environmental changes on the physiology and behavior of marine organisms. My PhD in integrative biology at the University of Rostock (Germany), is entitled "Bioenergetics-mediated effects of multiple stressors on marine bioturbators in shallow coastal ecosystems". I focus on the combined effects of constant and cyclic hypoxia and hypercapnia on a common bioturbator Mya arenaria at different levels (molecular and individual). I am assessing their digging activity, respiration and filtration rate (on the individual level), total energy reserves and their mitochondrial function (on the molecular level).Furthermore, I try to link the different observed physiological and molecular stress responses to the whole organism to see impacts on their fitness. Another project of my PhD is to perform modelling at the individual level by using the concept of DEB (Dynamic Energy Budget theory).

From a marine and coastal ecology education, I obtained a Bachelor in “Marine Biology and Ecology” and a Master in “Ecology and dynamics of estuaries and coasts” from the University of La Rochelle (France). Since the beginning of my studies, my research interests focuses on the impact of environmental changes, whether natural or human-induced, on the physiology of marine organism. I had the chance to assess the impact of environmental variability (Hypoxia, Temperature, pH) from the individual to the molecular level. I am currently doing my PhD by focusing on bioenergetics-mediated effects of multiple stressors (hypoxia and hypercapnia) on marine bioturbators (Mya arenaria) in shallow coastal ecosystems at the University of Rostock (Germany).

My research focuses on phenotypically plastic responses of organisms to environmental change, functional morphology and ecology of marine invertebrates and algae, life histories of marine invertebrates, and invasion biology.

Dianna grew up in Wyomig, recevied Bachelors Degrees in Biological Oceanography and Zoology and the University of Washington, a MS in Zoology at Oregon State University, and PhD at the University of Alberta, Canada, and was a postdoc at Cornell before taking a job at the University of Wisconsin. After 8 years she left Wisconsin and moved to Stony Brook.