I received my BS in Biological Sciences with an emphasis in marine biology at UC Davis in 2013, where I studied fish strike kinematics and phenotypic plasticity in barnacles. In 2014, I moved to Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi to work on my Ph.D. with Dr. Lee Smee. During my time at TAMUCC, I worked on several projects including assessing the ecological consequences of turbidity on oyster reef communities, quantifying the effects of Hurricane Harvey and recreational fishing pressure on oyster reef communities, and host-parasite dynamics with the crab-castrating parasite Loxothylacus panopaei. In May 2020, I earned my Ph.D. in Marine Biology having successfully defended my dissertation entitled “Fish predators maintain estuarine biodiversity and benefit ecosystem engineers.”

As a SPIRE postdoctoral scholar, I am working in the lab of Dr. Joel Fodrie (https://fodriefishecol.wixsite.com/unc-fish). I have broad research interests in marine ecology, including predator-prey interactions, community ecology, and parasitology. Here, I will be examining the relationship between larval dispersal distance and host microbiomes in Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica). Specifically, I will couple elemental fingerprinting with 16S rRNA gene sequencing to determine how environmental changes, such as climate-related shifts in precipitation, salinity, and temperature, affect Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) recruitment dynamics and their associated microbiome.