Hi, I’m Emily.

I am an ecophysiologist interested in how aquatic animals cope with environmental change.

My Background

Overview

I completed my PhD in the Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology department at UC Santa Barbara in Dr. Erika Eliason's lab. For my thesis, I studied how changes in fish nutrition impacts their thermal plasticity and thermal tolerance. Currently, I’m an NSF postdoctoral research fellow in Dr. Kevin Kohl's lab at the University of Pittsburgh. In my postdoctoral research, I am studying how host-microbe interactions influence the resilience of larval amphibians to extreme environmental conditions.

Education

PhD - UC Santa Barbara (2023)

BS Marine Biology - UC Santa Cruz (2014)

BS Molecular Biology - UC Santa Cruz (2014)

Diet impacts on ectotherm thermal performance

Human activity is impacting what animals have available to eat and the quality of that food, which may impair their environmental tolerance. In this review, we discuss the ways in which nutrition supports thermal physiology in ectothermic animals, like fish, insects, reptiles, and amphibians.

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Recent Publications

Body size & temperature affect metabolic & cardiac thermal tolerance in fish

Environmental warming is making fish grow smaller. Does this mean larger fish are somehow more vulnerable to climate change than small ones? Check out this paper, led by Krista Kraskura, comparing thermal tolerance in large vs. small surfperch. Good news: the larger fish were not aerobically impaired in warm water!

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The impacts of diet on cardiac performance under changing environments

Bad nutrition — caused by shifts in food availability and quality — can impair cardiac physiology of wildlife. But animals in dynamic environments must maintain cardiac function to survive environmental changes. In this commentary, we explore knowns and unknowns about how animal nutrition affects the environmental physiology of the heart.

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Get in Touch!

I’m always interested in hearing from other researchers and potential collaborators

Lumpfish photo by Kim Birnie-Gauvin