Understanding Color in Australian Frogs
I received funding from the National Science Foundation and the Australian Academy of Science through a joint fellowship called the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes, which allows me to collaborate with a researcher in Australia to complete a project over the course of 8 weeks. I spent summer 2015 (well, summer in the U.S.) in Australia to work on color evolution in the Australian Brood Frogs (Pseudophryne). This involved making thousands of clay models of different color forms to present to the local predators, and then assess what the predators prefer and avoid.
The video explains what I did in 2015 and the motivations for doing this research. Be sure to watch the video to learn more about what I want to do!
I am still working through the data and collaborating with Kate Umbers to better understand color evolution and evolutionary pressures driving color diversification. I was awarded an Endeavour Fellowship for 2016 to spend January-May at Western Sydney University to investigate the toxicity and diet of these frogs.
This research is ongoing...
I tried something I have not done before in my professional career and tried to crowdfund my research to get me to more locales in Australia. I am pleased to have raised $2,550 to help with that effort. I am incredibly overwhelmed at the generosity of people to seeing my success in this project. With that, I would like to sincerely thank the following people for their generous support of this project:
Jean Case
Scott Clark
Emily Cornelius
Sue Grisko
Christopher Jordan
Kim Lawrence
Keith and Marlene Lawrence
Stacey Lawrence
Wade Lawrence
Vasu Mahalingam
Tyler Mayer
Donna Pennington
John Pierce
Brett Saladino
Cathy Stiles
Cecile Webster
Shannon Webster
And my Anonymous Donors!