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Welcome,
I am a
Professor in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment
at the University of New Hampshire. By training, a marine
invertebrate zoologist, my research focuses on understanding
the processes that are responsible for the biodiversity we
observe in nature. To this end, I employ a variety of techniques
including molecular approaches, as well as traditional light and electron microscopy, and immunocytochemistry; all in an
effort to understand the phylogeography, morphology, population genetics, and ecology
of animals.
Two specific
projects in my lab focus on free-living, marine flatworms: one includes the systematics, biogeography and development of polyclads (an ongoing collaboration with my former grad students, Drs. Marcela Bolanos and Sigmer Quiroga), the other focuses on the fine-scale population genetics of meiofaunal kalyptorhynch and proseriate turbellarians (a collaboration with Drs. Julian P. Smith III, Winthrop University, SC and Steve Fegley, Institute of Marine Sciences, Univ of North Carolina, Morehead City, NC).
Other projects examine
the biotic and abiotic factors of byssal thread production
in the blue mussel, Mytilus edulis, and allorecognition
in the tunicate Botrylloides violaceus. The latter
two projects are carried out by my current graduate students,
Yvette Garner and Andrea Frey, respectively.
Additionally,
I have a long-standing collaboration with Dr. John Litvaitis,
a wildlife ecologist also in the Department of Natural Resources.
While John focuses on understanding the population dynamics
of species in fragmented habitats, my contributions include
determining the underlying genetics.
To learn
more about individual projects, please check out the Research
link in the left menu.
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