“Thus organisms and environments are both causes and effects

in a coevolutionary process.”

—Richard C. Lewontin in The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment.

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Major career milestones

This quarter has been full of accomplishments that have been a long time coming for me.

First, I got my first article published in a peer-reviewed journal. "Climate shapes population variation in dogwhelk predation on foundational mussels" will appear in Oecologia sometime in the next couple months. Huge thanks to coauthors Eric Palkovacs (my advisor) and Kerry Reid (former postdoc in the lab).

Secondly, I compiled an entire draft of my PhD dissertation! After many stressful weeks of finishing analyses while applying for jobs, I finally submitted my whole dissertation to my committee, and I'm very happy to report that those who have read it so far are pleased with it. I cannot understate the amount of weight that has been lifted from my shoulders. I feel at least 100 times lighter and I can do things like watch movies, play frisbee, and make snail puns again. Here is my title page as well as some new puns on old puns.

Thirdly, I got a part-time job doing environmental consulting with a company called Surf 2 Sea. I am analyzing mussel bed communities before and after a construction project at the marine lab here. For this work, I'm doing the exact same thing I've been doing in graduate school the last year, so it is a perfect transitional job. It's great to get back in the field again after being stuck writing for the last few months!






Otter-star project photos

In May, I got to help out graduate student Casey Sheridan with some subtidal fieldwork. Casey is working with a team of researchers to study sea urchin population dynamics and their effects on kelp forests (the CeNSUS program).

On our trip, we collected lots of urchins and kelp to use in feeding experiments. We also collected some bat stars for a lab studying color variation in them. Here are a few pictures of our outing.