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 Spanning from the molecular to the whole-organism level, research in our laboratory focuses on the energy acquisition strategies of organisms. In short, we are interested in how organisms make a living and the consequences of different energy acquisition strategies for ecosystem fluxes. Most of us work in the marine environment, but some prefer terrestrial & freshwater systems. Applying to grad school in biology? Here is a guide our lab developed. News: January 2026: A nice start to the New Year. We had three presentations at SICB: Valentina Peña and visiting scholar Isabel Villafuerte gave a talk and presented a poster, respectively. Dr. German presented a poster of the Buckner Vo et al. paper that is in the December announcement below. It was a successful conference. December 2025: Former undergrads, Jordan Buckner and Leyna Vo, had their paper on the effects of captivity on the digestive enzyme activities of Xiphister mucosus accepted in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A! This is truly a solid paper that shows that long-term captivity changes the gut in herbivorous fish. It has implications for holding herbivores for a lengthy period of time. It is now out on our publications page! Congrats to all involved, including Dr. Michelle Herrera, Dr. Karina Brocco French, Dr. Nefertiti Smith Christman, Daniel Rankins, Jackie Vasquez, Asmita Pande, Dr. Kwasi Connor, and Valentina Peña. The Lee et al. abalone paper is now on our publications page, too! We hope you have a great holiday season and a Happy New Year! September 2025: Former undergrad, Ariana Lee, had her paper on abalone microbiomes accepted in J Shellfish Research! It is a neat study comparing red abalone from California with pāua from New Zealand. Turns out there is an "abalone microbiome" that is shared in species across the world. Former doctoral students, Dr. Alyssa Frederick and Dr. Michelle Herrera, are co-authors. It will be on the publications page shortly. August 2025: Flashing back to July, Dr. Lyna Ngor officially started in the lab as a UC Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow. Welcome to Dr. Ngor as she pursues the impacts of polution on microbiomes. Dr. Karina Brocco French had her paper on sea urchin larval microbiomes officially come out in Biological Bulletin. K. Clerre Rafanan had her paper on the plasticity of digestive enzyme activities in C. violaceus accepted in Fish Physiology and Biochemistry! Clerre was an undergrad American Physiological Society SURF recipient who did a project in our lab in summer 2023, and it is now going to be published. See our publications page for more detail. Clerre used that experience to get into the PhD program at Michigan State University. Off to bigger and better things! AND, certainly the most exciting aspect of August: Dr. Newton Hood and Dr. Nefertiti Smith Christman successfully defended their dissertations. Dr. Hood investigated how dietary microalgal addition improves abalone digestion and reproduction, and Dr. Smith Christman studied how suspended sediment impacts fish physiology. Congrats to both of them as they begin their post-graduate explorations! It has been a journey together. June 2025: Dr. Michelle Herrera had her paper on Cebidichthys violaceus micrbiomes finally come out in Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology! See our publications page. It is a thorough piece of work on how dietary shifts impact fish physiology and microbiome diversity! May 2025: Congratulations to Daniel Rankins on winning the Dr. William F Holcomb Scholarship from the School of Biological Sciences at UCI! This is a competitive award and speaks to Daniel's progress as a graduate student. April 2025: Spring feels good. Karina Brocco French had a paper accepted at Biological Bulletin. The work examines the sources of microbes for developing sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus), showing that the water is the likely source (more so than food or vertical transmission from the parents). Look for that on our publication page in the near future. April 21 update: We are excited to announce that we will have a new doctoral student starting in the fall! Jessica Flores, currently at the LA County Museum of Natural History, will begin in the lab in September. Here is a little article about her work. She was an NSF GRFP Honorable Mention, which speaks to her amazing potential. We are excited to welcome Jessica into the lab! Valentina Peña, Daniel Rankins, and Newton Hood all presented their work at the Southern California Academy of Sciences meeting, which was at UCI on 25 April. It was a great meeting and all of their presentations went well. Crazy AI stuff: A new AI tool called Notebook LM (NotebookLM | Note Taking & Research Assistant Powered by AI) is doing crazy things. We put in German and Bittong (2009), and it returned an intelligent podcast on the paper. It is kind of scary. You can listen to that here. These are the recent news stories. Check out the "People" page for links to each person's personal page, which will have more individual news. We are always recruiting graduate students. Please contact Dr. German if you are interested in pursuing your PhD in Nutritional Ecology and/or Marine Biology at UCI. Are you an undergrad interested in doing research in our lab? Bio 199 Application |
