I am currently a graduate student in the Hellberg lab at LSU, where my work focuses on the evolutionary biology of corals. My current work focuses on male and female coral responses to low-pH  and coral speciation in the Gulf of California.

Roughly 30% of corals have separate sexes. In the Gulf of California, Porites panamensis males are outperforming females, and the sex ratio is becoming biased towards males. This can be detrimental to genetic diversity within populations where sexual reproduction becomes more rare. I aim to determine the specific genes and regions of the genome to tease apart these inter-sexual differences in this coral. 

P. panamensis was named in Panama by Addison Emery Verrill in 1866. However, this species occurs in the Northern Gulf of California. A.E. Verrill had originally named the Gulf of California's P. panamensis the P. californicus, which has since become synomynized. Some recent data may suggest that A.E. Verrill was on the right track because Gulf P. panamensis is now more closely related with a different, morphologically distinct, Porites species in the Gulf of California than with its Central Mexican counterparts. 

See more of the Hellberg Lab below!