Natalie Aguirre (Helms lab) graduated with a B.S. in biology from Pepperdine University. During this time, she completed an honor’s thesis conducting research on the interaction of drought stress and pathogen infection in a chaparral shrub species, Malosma laurina. She then spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at the Universidad Politecnica in Madrid, Spain, where she studied effect of water stress on Dutch Elm Disease. Most recently, Natalie worked for the Everglades Foundation in Miami, Florida, creating educational programs and materials about the Florida everglades.
Spotlight – Alyson Brokaw
Alyson Brokaw is a Ph.D. candidate in the Smotherman Lab with an imminent dissertation defense scheduled for December 9th. Alyson joined the Smotherman Lab at the dawn of the EEB program following completion of her M.S. in the Szewczak lab at Humboldt State University where she began her academic journey studying bat sensory ecology, olfaction, neurophysiology, and bat behavior. Read more in the December NewsfEEB.
Spotlight – Owen Dorsey
EEB student Owen Dorsey graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2014 with a BS in Biology. After graduation, he took a couple of years off, working as a laboratory technologist at the American Red Cross, before starting his MS work at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. For his research, he investigated inbreeding avoidance and mate choice behavior in the invasive western mosquitofish (a close relative of swordtails!) using a combination of behavioral assays and genetic analyses.
Owen joined the Rosenthal lab in 2019 and is broadly interested in studying the fitness consequences of inbreeding and the evolution of pre- and post- copulatory mechanisms to avoid inbreeding. Owen plans to investigate the “cost-benefit” to inbreeding in swordtails.
Spotlight – MC Hannon
Her dissertation research focuses on the reproductive habits of a local species of polychaetes, the common clam worm. She is taking a four-pronged approach to get a comprehensive picture of what is occurring by using ecological, genetic, histological, and biomechanic tools.
In her spare time, MC is very active and enjoys playing Ultimate Frisbee and going to a Crossfit gym (when conditions are safe). Fun fact: MC is an ordained minister in the state of Texas and officiated her first wedding earlier this year!
Spotlight – Angie Achorn
Angie Achorn (ANTH behavioral ecology) graduated from Rhode Island College in 2016 with a B.A. in Anthropology and a minor in Environmental Studies. Previously, she has studied cultural perceptions of primates as pets, trash-raiding behaviors by white-faced capuchins, and intestinal parasite infections in three lemur species. She earned her M.A. in Anthropology at Texas A&M in 2018, and is now a PhD candidate in the anthropology department under Dr. Sharon Gursky.
Angie is currently in Indonesia on a Fulbright fellowship collecting data for her dissertation, which explores relationships between coloration, mating behaviors, parasite infections, and hormones in Sulawesi crested macaques. She just published a paper on sexual selection in Trends in Ecology and Evolution with EEB faculty Dr. Gil Rosenthal.