Laura Sirot, Hope Klug, Kavita Isvaran, and Becca Hale

Hope Klug spent the summer of 2004 at Tvärminne Zoological Station, which is situated on the Baltic Sea in southern Finland. Here, she conducted a study evaluating costs and benefits of filial cannibalism in the sand goby. This work is part of her dissertation research examining the evolutionary significance of filial cannibalism. In July, Hope met up with Becca Hale, Kavita Isvaran, Laura Sirot,and Billy Gunnels at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology conference in Jyväskylä, Finland, where they each presented their research. After the conference, Hope, Becca, Laura, and Kavita toured around part of Finland including a bike trip around islands off of the southwest coast of the country.

Jeremy Kirchman (Ph. D.)

Last year and the year before I went to the Republic of Vanuatu in the
South Pacific. I was there to collect samples of a bird I'm studying
called Gallirallus philippensis (see attached picture). I traveled to
four islands in Vanuatu catching birds and staying with locals. Now I'm
using the samples to compare DNA from different populations to determine
how genetically isolated island populations are. This is part of my
attempt to understand how (and how fast) flightless species in the genus
Gallirallus evolve from volant colonizing ancestors.

Keith Choe (Ph. D.)

In the summer of 2004, I received an East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes (EAPSI) fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF:0413427) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. This fellowship allowed me to travel to Japan and work with Professor Shigehisa Hirose, a leader in the field of comparative animal ion transport. With techniques and reagents that he developed in Japan, I was able to identify and characterize a salt and acid transporting protein (NHE3) in an ancestral vertebrate. I showed that the NHE3 protein in located in the gills of stingrays, and that it probably functions for sodium absorption when the fish are in fresh water. This new evidence that NHE3 functions for sodium absorption in freshwater fishes and will lead to a new physiological model for the fish gill. Knowing the gene sequence for NHE3 in stingrays will also help determine how acid and salt transport proteins evolved in vertebrates. Comparing the structures and functions of homologous transport proteins from evolutionarily distantly related animals (e.g., stingrays and humans) can determine how different portions of transport proteins effect overall activity and function, information that is critical for drug discovery.