Lead Story

Congrats to Mariangel Correa-Orellana, a second year PhD student in our EEB program, for passing her qualifying exams and advancing to becoming a PhD candidate! Mariangel’s dissertation focuses on microbial ecology of anchialine habitats in Hawaii. She’s interested in what these microbes are doing and will be applying metagenomics to ask what metabolic functions different members of these communities are performing, as well as whether these functions are different across different habitat types (for example, habitats with a distinct orange crust community vs. those with mud substrates or green algal mats). She’s also interested in animal-microbe interactions in these habitats and will be taking a deep dive into the gut microbiomes of the main shrimp species that is endemic to these habitats (opae ula, Halocaridina rubra).

We’re all interested to see how her work turns out over the next few years!

We had a great time hosting my postdoc adviser Dan Sloan for a lab BBQ outing in the Texas Hill country! Dan was in town to celebrate his postdoc adviser, Nancy Moran, and Howard Ochman, along with ~50 other of their lab alumni. It was great catching up and seeing some academic relatives.

Our lab is leading a big effort to get undergrads involved in biodiversity research by transforming the UT turtle pond into a living lab. We’ve involved around 100 students so far!

Last year, students sampled turtles (mostly red-eared sliders) in urban ponds across Austin to ask whether microbiomes were different in turtles from different ponds, or if different body parts of the turtles had different microbial communities.

This year, we’re focusing on the UT turtles, examining microbiomes in the same individuals across seasons and asking whether individuals have specific microbiomes. The turtles were also moved off campus for a short time while the UT ponds were being repaired, so we can ask whether an environmental disturbance caused changes in microbial communities.

Here’s a story from KUT highlighting the turtles’ moving adventure, and another story on our work.

Next year the project will continue in the broad sense, but students will be working with a different PI to address a different question at the ponds.

Almost anyone can get involved in this work! Just email Justin to get started.

Welcome to the lab! We’re in the Integrative Biology Department @ The University of Texas. We study evolution, ecology, and physiology and most of our projects have something to do with mitochondria. Click around to learn more and reach out if you have any questions.