Wow, what a busy year! Since my last update I completed my summer fellowship with USFW (see previous post). You can find more information about my fellowship on my blog posts here. After finishing my fellowship, I started working on my doctoral dissertation and preparing to graduate. I also managed two quick trips for field work in March and April to conduct the experiment I originally set up in January 2020. Obviously covid-19 hit shortly after our trip in January so we were unsure if we would be able to complete my final project. Luckily I was able to squeeze in trips this year and successfully complete the experiment! These trips were just a mere couple of months before I was set to defend my dissertation and graduate!
I successfully defended my dissertation and graduated in May with my PhD in Biology. We then submitted my last experiment for publication and it was just published in Ecology Letters! The paper is titled "Transplant experiments demonstrate that larger brains are favoured in high-competition environments in Trinidadian killifish". UTA also released a news story about our experiment and findings - you can read it here.
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Hello all! Since my last update I've been fairly busy. In the spring, I helped run and manage a Daphnia (a small aquatic crustacean, aka zooplankton) experiment in the lab that involved running experimental populations under specific, controlled conditions. In May, I began a summer fellowship with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) through the Directorate Fellows Program (DFP). The DFP is an 11-week summer program aimed at rising senior undergraduates or graduate students. Students are selected to work with specific USFWS offices on various projects. I am currently working with the Carlsbad CA field office to complete species assessments on threatened, endangered, or at-risk species. Unfortunately, I'm working remotely due to COVID but despite this my experience has been great! I'm currently in my 5th week and I've been tasked with completing 2 species assessments. I'm working on a 5-year short review of the San Bernardino Mountains bladderpod, a plant species that is only found on carbonate soils in that mountain range, and a rapid assessment for the Santa Catalina Island ornate shrew which is a small mammal found only on the island. Primarily, working on these assessments involves reading and locating new information and contacting partners from other organizations. But it's not all work. I've had great opportunities to network, learn more about the positions in USFWS, and what the USFWS does (hint: it's probably more than you think!). I'm very excited about this opportunity, and hope to continue working with USFWS upon completing my PhD! Stay tuned for more updates on my fellowship. See species photos below. Well, 2020 has been quite a year. The Covid-19 pandemic has taken it's toll on almost all aspects of life, including research. Last time I updated, I had just set up an experiment in Trinidad with expectations to return twice to finish that project. Unfortunately, I have yet to return and complete the transplant experiment. We hope to able to return next year sometime after vaccines have been distributed, but time will tell. If we return I will have to start the transplant experiment over and set it up again.
There is some good news though. I recently had my first 'first author' and first publication accepted! You can find my new paper titled 'Coordinated evolution of brain size, structure, and eye size in Trinidadian killifish' in Ecology and Evolution. You can read the open access article here. I returned last month from another trip to Trinidad to set up an experiment that will require me to return two more times at least. I set up a transplant experiment, where we moved fish from sites with predators to sites without. The goal is to see how fish respond in terms of growth and survival to being transplanted. Essentially my main question here is: Do fish with larger brains survive and grow better than fish with smaller brains when moved to new sites? I will also compare the growth and survival of the fish that were moved to the fish that are already at the transplant sites. I will be returning in March and May to recapture marked fish. I'm excited about this project and hope it works! We will find out when I return in March whether or not our transplanted fish fled these sites. This work will help determine the drivers of brain size variation in this population of fish and potentially reveal benefits of evolving larger brains. Below you'll find some pictures from my January trip. Wow, it has a been a bit since I posted any updates. Since last June I have been working on data analysis and writing. In August I traveled to Alaska to assist a fellow Walsh lab graduate student, Michelle, in field work. While there we collected zooplankton samples for Michelle's work, specifically Daphnia species. Daphnia and other zooplankton are small animals that usually eat algae (phytoplankton), and are preyed upon by larger zooplankton or fish. See Michelle's website for more information on her Daphnia work. There were a few different wildfires at the time we were in Alaska, and we drove through some of areas near the fires to reach sites. It was quite a sight, and a juxtaposition to the beautiful views that are usually the norm. The last few days I have been attending my first conference, Evolution 2019! I presented my first poster titled 'Connecting brain size, behavioral flexibility, and dispersal in Trinidadian killifish, Rivulus hartii'. This poster was a combination of my last two experiments and hopefully I will have a paper out soon. It was exciting to discuss my work with other interested scientists during the poster session. It was also great to meet new people at the conference and hear about a wide variety of research happening across the field. I had a bit of time to explore Providence, Rhode Island while here and thoroughly enjoyed seeing the city! Until the next conference! The last several weeks have definitely kept us busy! Things are starting to wind down, as our time here in Trinidad is coming to a close. After finishing the initial captures for my experiment, we set up Shannon's pot mesocosm experiments, which required setting up and fixing the pots as well as catching extra fish. We caught extra fish for her experiment and for my behavioral trials from the two sites (Rivulus Only) used for my experiment as well as two more (High Predation). We go out at night to catch killifish (Rivulus hartii) as they are more active at night. In between all of that we made various trips into town for groceries, gas, and other errands. Recap for my experiment began on December 5th, and we finished up the experiment on the 10th! Now we are finishing up Shannon's experiments. While we have been working tirelessly these past few weeks, we have managed some fun and relaxation - playing cards, reading, and even a beach day (on our one full day off so far). I am currently back in Trinidad! Shannon and I arrived late last Wednesday (11/14) and have hit the ground running. We are running one mark-recapture experiment, a mesocosm experiment, and behavioral assays while here. The last week has mostly been spent setting up the mark-recap experiment. For this experiment, I am testing the connection between brain size and dispersal in the killifish, Rivulus hartii. This is one of a few planned experiments to test the cognitive buffer hypothesis which essentially postulates that larger brains evolve because they buffer organisms from novel challenges through behavioral flexibility. This mark-recap involves noting a fish's specific locations when caught and returning it to that specific location after processing the fish back in lab (weighing, measuring, photographing, and giving each fish a unique identifying mark). We have just finished setting up two streams with the initial capture. It has been a lot of work but hopefully we get some interesting results! In the next few days we hope to have Shannon's competition mesocosm experiments set up. Expect updates and pictures when our schedule allows! Over the last year I have been working on projects in the lab. Most recently, I have been working on a collaborative project where I will be looking at brain size in the context of trophic levels. This involves several different species of fish from Sabine Lake in Texas (which are caught by my collaborators, led by Philip Matich). I am currently in the process of dissecting the brains out, in order to weigh and take photos of them. You can see pictures of the process below. I am also preparing for more Trinidad field work this fall! The Walsh Lab recently participated in EarthX, an environmental expo, conference, and film festival. Our lab does outreach at a booth along with another biology lab from the department. This year I got the chance to meet Dr. Laurie Marker of the Cheetah Conservation Fund. I'm so glad I got to meet and talk to Dr. Marker, whom I look up to and who's work I greatly admire. I hope to someday have an impact on conservation as big as Dr. Marker has made. I have now met two of my idols (previously met the awesome Jane Goodall)!
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AuthorKaitlyn Howell Archives
October 2022
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