This dissertation research focused on the ways in which clear crustaceans with complex bodies (i.e. with hard cuticles, thick muscles, and other internal organs) maintain transparency across their entire body volume. I ...

The kingdom Fungi is one of the major groups of the plant microbiome(Hardoim et al., 2015; Vandenkoornhuyse et al., 2015; Peay et al., 2016). Of the various plant-fungus interactions, mycorrhizal fungi that form mutualistic ...

Contests are essential parts of an animal’s life history, as they dictate access to critical resources like mates, food, or territory. Studying how animals efficiently assess competitive ability to resolve contests is a ...

Fungal endophytes are ubiquitous inhabitants of plants and can have a wide range of effects on their hosts, from pathogenic to mutualistic. These fungal associates are important drivers of plant success and therefore contribute ...

Cleaner shrimp are small, brightly-colored tropical crustaceans that attract reef fish clients to set locations on a reef called cleaning stations and then "clean" them by removing ectoparasites from their scales, gills, ...

Cancer is a major threat to human health and results in 1 in 6 deaths globally. Despite an extraordinary amount of effort and money spent, eradication or control of advanced disease has not yet been achieved. Understanding ...

Mouse lemurs (genus Microcebus; Order Primates) are endemic to the island nation of Madagascar. These small, nocturnal primates offer a unique mammalian system ideally suited to study the patterns and processes of speciation, ...

How species adapt to their local environments over the course of evolution remains an important question that underlies much of modern biology. Though much has been learned, many questions remain unanswered on the interplay ...

All life is organized hierarchically. Lower levels, such as cells and zooids, are nested within higher levels, such as multicellular organisms and colonial animals. The process by which a higher-level unit forms from the ...

Scallops, a family of swimming bivalve mollusks, have dozens of eyes arrayed along the edges of their valves. Relatively little is known about the form and function of these unusual eyes. To learn more about them, we studied ...