Laura hails from UC Davis, where she earned her Bachelors degree in Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology. She has researched the influence of salinity tolerance on Western Pond Turtle Biology, and more recently has focused on the conservation of Giant Gartersnakes. In the Parrott Lab, Laura is interested in addressing how contaminants impact animal movement as well as how animals might transport contaminants across the landscape.

Emily was recently awarded the Erlanger Fellowship, which will support her work on biological aging and the proximal mechanisms underlying environmental-mediated variation in life histories. Samantha was awarded funds from the IUCN-SSC Crocodilian Specialist Group to support her work on developing minimally invasive epigenetic markers of sex in hatchling alligators. Super proud and excited for their work to be recognized (and supported)!

Matthew Hale defended his doctoral work in May and is finishing up work in the lab before starting a postdoc with Bob Cox's group at the University of Virginia in the fall. Congratulations Dr. Hale! Pictured is Matthew with the incredible (wood burned) piece that Marilyn made!

This spring, Stacey Lance and I co-instructed a course on EcoDevo and Ecotoxcology, with meetings on campus and a four-day workshop at the Savannah River Ecology Lab. I immensely enjoyed all our discussions ranging from life-history strategies in amphibians to environmental sex determination in fish. Looking back, I continue to be amazed by the apparent ease in which undergrads were able to digest recent papers and identify critical questions being addressed as well as outstanding questions in the field. Plus, the presentations at the end of the workshop were stellar! Looking forward to next time (Spring 2021).

Findings from Matthew Hale's dissertation work were recently published in Biology of Reproduction, "Embryonic estrogen exposure recapitulates persistent ovarian transcriptional programs in a model of environmental endocrine disruption"  

Funding will support our work on how environmental and endocrine cues are integrated into the epigenome during development. We will be recruiting undergraduate and graduate students, so stay tuned.