I am thrilled to have been awarded a research grant from the Royal Society titled "Physiological advantages of fish schooling", where I will get the chance to come back to some exciting research from my PhD, looking at the calming effect of group living in gregarious fishes. With this grant, we will be able to look into both the factors that modulate the calming effect and see if we can detect it through techniques for field metabolic rate. Can't wait! 

Check out our new paper in Frontiers in Fish Science, led by former graduate student Monica Bacchus, where we show that larger group sizes of a schooling coral reef fish exhibited lower kinematic performance in their escape response potentially due to a greater perceived safety in their larger group. I was especially excited for this one, as it is my first last-author paper. Congratulations to Monica on her first first-author publication! 

After endless packing, I am excited to be officially here at the University of Southampton. I had an amazing (and breezy) introduction to the Solent right at the waterfront campus' doorstep with other new lecturers on the RV Callista. More to come soon!

After three weeks in the field in Australia, we have returned from the first annual field "Transdisciplinary approaches to coral reef science" course, funding by the National Science Foundation's International Research Experiences for
Students track II program. We learned a ton that we can use to make the course even better in the future and think the students had an amazing experience as well. 

​I am excited to announce that the NMBP lab is moving to the University of Southampton in the UK in fall 2022. I will be based at the National Oceanography Centre. This unique location on the south coast of England will allow access to the many unique marine systems close by and facilitate collaborations with the many amazing researchers at the University and close by. 

After a year of pandemic induced delays, I finally have fish (and snails) in my lab! Yayyy! The fish species in the lab are Fundulus similis (longnose killifish) and F. grandis (gulf killifish). Both are known second intermediate hosts for the Euhaplorchis sp. A parasite, which is found on their brain. They are infected by free-swimming larval parasites called cercariae that depart the first intermediate host, Cerithideopsis scalariformis (ladder hornsnail). With both the first and second intermediate host in the lab, I will be able to do experimental infections of the killifish to determine how they response (either behaviorally or physiologically) to these infectious parasites in their environment. I studies a closely related system in California, and found that the killifish host wasn't happy when it encountered cercariae in their environment and am interested in testing similiar ideas here.