RSI Research Seminar

Join us every other Monday at noon for lunch and a 30-minute research talk, presented by Resnick Sustainability Institute Graduate Fellows and Caltech researchers funded by the Resnick Sustainability Institute. To see the full schedule of speakers, visit the RSI Research Seminar web page. Seminars are currently in-person only. For more information, please reach out to [email protected]

Ecological Pattern to Molecular Mechanism: Evolutionary Selection for Environmental Resilience in the Marine Environment

Marine environments vary from habitats that are relatively stable, such as the open ocean and the deep sea, to those that are highly variable, such as the intertidal and the shallow nearshore. This presentation will focus upon two examples, one from each of these scenarios of stability, with a consideration of the role of temperature in selection of critical phenotypes: 1) the evolution of the central metabolism enzyme lactate dehydrogenase in four species of eastern Pacific barracudas, which have been reproductively isolated into four open-ocean provinces that differ in temperature by only a few degrees; and 2) the impact of temperature on the resilience of the symbiosis between the bobtail squid and its luminous bacteria partner, an association that occurs in the highly variable environment of the nearshore backreefs of the Hawaiian archipelago.