Dr. Marian K. Litvaitis

Department of Natural Resources and the Environment

College of Life Sciences and Agriculture

University of New Hampshire

 

 

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.

  
portrait of Marian Litvaitis
Lab News

Congratulations to Yvette Garner for passing her written and oral comprehensive exams and for being advanced to candidacy on May 11, 2012!

Congratulations to Danielle D'Amore for presenting the work of her Senior Thesis "Is there a Link Between Heterozygosity and Mobility, Size, and Sex in the Blue Mussel Mytilus edulis? An EPIC-PCR Approach" at the COLSA Undergraduate Research Conference on April 28, 2012.

Congratulations to Andrea Frey for successfully defending her Master's Thesis "A Quantitative Evaluation of Cellular Changes During Fusion Events in the Colonial Ascidians Polyclinum constellatum and Didemnum vexillum" on April 19, 2012!

Congratulations to Chris Schillaci for presenting his research proposal "Occurrence of Hemopoietic Neoplasia and its Effects on Physiological Condition and Reproductive Development of Soft Shell Clams in Massachusetts."

To report problems or broken links, please contact m.litvaitis@unh.edu