My Interests
I focus on how populations adapt to shifting environmental conditions. I'm particularly drawn to parasites, invaders, and other species perceived as disruptive. Most of my work has focused on native and introduced North Pacific crab species, but I've also dipped my toes into the world of fish and non-crab inverts, with work on salmon, cod, herring, and sea cucumbers. I also have an interest in fishery management and the relationship between the marine and human world. Occasionally, I publish posts on the Bitter Crab blog on whatever topics interest me at the moment
My work with the Roberts Lab has involved both transcriptomic analyses (using kallisto, DESeq2, Trinity, and WGCNA) and creating generalized linear mixed models.
In order to accomplish all this, I've become quite proficient in both R and bash scripting. I am a proponent of open science,
and use an open-access online lab notebook as well
as GitHub to share my research and support reproducibility.
Current Work
Analyzing gene expression in Tanner crabs and the parasitic dinoflagellate Hematodinium
This project captured Tanner crabs from fjords in southeast Alaska, used qPCR to check infection status, and then exposed infected and uninfected crabs to various temperatures over a 17-day test period. Samples were taken throughout for sequencing. My work uses transcriptomics to analyze differences in expression over time, between treatment groups, and between infected and uninfected individuals.
Examining biological and environmental variables associated with visible Hematodinium infection in Tanner crabs
This project utilizes Alaska Department of Fish and Game survey data collected over several decades of annual crab surveys in southeast Alaska. I sorted through and cleaned this dataset (a massive endeavor on its own, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of measurements!), and then built a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) to examine variables associated with visible infection. I found a variety of associated factors, some matching previous research (such as a linkage to shell condition and sex), others more new (a linkage to clutch fullness).