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Photo: T.L.
Kennedy
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Research Interests
As an undergraduate, I held
an REU position in an
aquatic ecology lab. Our
work was centered around
semi-arid rivers that
experience partial to total
dry-down on a regular basis.
We were interested in how
food web dynamics are
altered across space and
time as these events occur.
As a graduate student, I
expanded on this initial
interest in ecology. For my
Masters, I conducted a study
on young-of-year fishes and
invertebrate communities in
a mesocosm experiment that
was originally part of the
above-mentioned food web
study. I combined gut
content and stable isotope
analyses with abundance and
diversity data to better
understand the changes in
community interactions over
time. The focus of the
research was on the role YOY
fishes play in food web
dynamics in extreme
conditions associated with
drying rivers.
Over the past summer, I
utilized some of the same
food web methods in
tributaries to Lake Hovsgol
in northern Mongolia. As a
relatively pristine system,
Hovsgol serves as a
reference for base-line
climate change impacts.
Consequently, understanding
trophic interactions is
vital to the long term
assessment of the impacts of
warming.
I have since returned to
work with larval fishes in a
reproductive phenology
project in the Brazos and
Trinity rivers in Texas. We
are attempting to assess the
spawning time for several
species of concern.
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