Since 2012, my undergraduate laboratory at Mount Holyoke College (MHC) has been studying geographic trends in the physiological traits and thermoregulatory behaviors of Minuca pugnax, an intertidal fiddler crab species. We are currently determining the parameter values for a Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) model adapted for bimodal breathers. We plan to determine how the physiology and behavior of individual M. pugnax will influence this high impact species’ future geographic range. Ultimately, we will use the model to explore questions about limits, tradeoffs and the fundamental species niche. These questions include:
• What limits reproductive output along the range?
• What are the impacts of warmer days and earlier emergence times on the energy budgets of crabs?
• Does bimodal respiration dominated by air breathing broaden the window of thermal tolerance?
• How will continued warming impact the fundamental niche of M. pugnax?
While pursuing the model parameters, we have arrived at new insights into the thermoregulatory behaviors of this species. For example, after collecting the body temperatures of hundreds of individual free ranging crabs and concurrently measuring environmental temperatures, we were able to show that crabs began to behaviorally thermoregulate at specific surface temperatures (24°C at the southern range edge) by using their burrows to access much cooler environments underground. While this behavior allows them to escape potentially lethal conditions on the surface, it also results in lost feeding and courtship time. Collaborations with modelers will allow us to better grasp the long-term costs of this behavioral strategy.

I am a professor at Mount Holyoke College, a small liberal arts college for women in the northeastern United States, where I use both field and laboratory based investigations to explore behavioral thermoregulation in intertidal crustaceans. I have been working with undergraduate research students for nearly 20 years, and have received CAREER and NSF RUI awards. Most of the students mentored in my lab have pursued STEM-related careers and post graduate education. As a BIPOC scientist, I nearly always have a BIPOC majority research group, where students of color have the unusual experience of doing STEM work in a setting in which they are not minoritized. I participate regularly in the many professional development workshops offered on my campus, especially those centered on creating inclusive learning environments for students. Currently, I am a faculty leader in the HHMI Inclusive Excellence initiative on our campus, where we are engaged in leading a shift from deficit to achievement-oriented frameworks in faculty labs and classrooms.

I am interested in comparative sciurid (squirrel) thermophysiology and energetics.

Research Assistant / PhD student at the University of Maine and attached student researcher at the Institute for Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation at the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.

Most of my research investigates how fluid flow in the environment – whether in air or in water – impacts organisms, but I am also interested in the effects of other stressors, such as thermal stress, predation risk, and disturbance, on organisms. My PhD work investigated (1) the mechanical and physiological adaptations that allow kelp to survive in wave-swept habitats and (2) the ecological and mechanical interactions between kelp and the destructive herbivores living and feeding on the kelp. Now as a postdoc, I am investigating (1) the flight and behavioral strategies that bees use to traverse moving, wind-blown vegetation and (2) the effects of wing design on the physiology and flight performance of bees in wind.

I received a BS from the University of South Carolina where I worked with Drs. David Wethey, Brian Helmuth, and Fernando Lima. I then received a PhD from the University of California - Berkeley where I was advised by Dr. Mimi Koehl. I am now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California - Davis where I am advised by Dr. Stacey Combes.

Animal behavior, ecophysiology, ecoimmunology, thermal biology, animal coloration and antioxidants. Primarily work with birds (including house sparrows, tree swallows, and eastern bluebirds).

BA in Biology and Physics from Bowdoin College, MS in Raptor Biology from Boise State University, and PhD in Biology from Arizona State University. Professor at Lafayette College in Easton, PA since 2012.

Research in the Carrington Lab follows an ecomechanical approach to the study of living systems, applying the basic engineering principles to evaluate how coastal organisms interact with their environment. Our work involves both plants and animals and spans many levels of biological organization, from the mechanics of biological materials, to the persistence of populations, to the characterization of the physical environment. A central goal of our research is to understand how coastal organisms with cope with ocean change, such as ocean acidification and warming.

Emily Carrington grew up in Michigan and North Carolina, always fascinated with water and the creatures that lived in it. She received a BA in Biology from Cornell University in 1985 a doctoral degree from Stanford University in 1992 (advised by Dr. Mark Denny). She was a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. John Gosline’s laboratory at UBC before joining the faculty of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Rhode Island in 1995. She has been on the faculty of the UW Department of Biology since 2005.

I am broadly interested in how physical laws constrain and enable biological diversity with a particular interaction in locomotion and respiration.

I am an ECR working in biomechanics.

I study behavior and metabolic physiology in insects, primarily using leafcutter ants, seed-harvester ants, and wing-dimorphic crickets as my study systems. My work ranges from studying cooperation in ant queen foundress associations, to evaluating changes in metabolic flux in response to a range of environmental factors in crickets.

Field and lab research, insect husbandry, metabolic physiology, behavior