Current Lab Members
| Michael N Dawson | P.I. | [CV] | |
| Feel like you're drifting though life? A long way from home? Misunderstood? Odds stacked against you? Maybe you're a marine plankter. If so, Mike has a place you can stay; it's small, cold, and dark, but it's got a door and we'll get you liquored up for free. If that kills you (which it will), we'll give you PCR. It won't bring you back to life, but it will immortalize you in one of a series of fabulous studies of scyphozoan phylogenomics, comparative biogeography and phylogeography, marine population genomics, rapid evolutionary radiation in marine zooplankton, conservation genetics of marine fishes, or the community ecology of marine lakes. Learn more here.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=SC0-DtIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao https://cgomo.net/ |
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| Project scientists | ||
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| Post-doctoral Scholars | For Future Lab Members: Postdoc opportunities | |
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Carmen Pedraza My research focuses on studying the evolutionary processes that promote population structure, lineage diversification, and ultimately speciation in marine ecosystems. To this end, I use population genomic analyses to study the evolutionary history of co-distributed species, which, in combination with seascape genomic approaches, provides the tools to better understand the mechanisms behind local adaptation. As a postdoctoral scholar in Dawson’s lab, I will study multi-species associations on population and ecosystem dynamics under a community genomics framework to identify spatial patterns of genomic diversity, population connectivity, and responses to abiotic and biotic environmental variations. I will mainly work on the project “Biotech for Biodiversity – Exploration of an Ecological Genomic Approach to Marine Conservation,” focusing on sea star wasting and kelp ecosystem collapse, using genomics for restoration efforts. Although my previous research has been conducted using shore reef fishes as the study system, I am excited to discover the world of marine invertebrates and apply genomic approaches to investigate the drivers of evolution in marine ecosystems.Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=XBRKwC0AAAAJ |
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Sam Fellows Sam has rejoined the lab to bring his expertise in evolutionary biology and population genomics to bear on several of our ongoing sea star projects. Sam is conducting bioinformatic analyses of whole genome resequencing data to determine [1] whether there are population genomic differences in the six-rayed sea star before versus after the sea star wasting outbreak of 2013–2015, [2] with greater precision, which loci distinguish the ochre sea star before versus after the sea star wasting outbreak, and [3] whether those differences are maintained or eroded as populations of ochre stars recover post-outbreak. These projects are led by our long-time collaborator Dr. Lauren Schiebelhut. Sam is also helping generate data for a project examining the diversity of scyphozoan jellyfishes and their photosymbionts in multiple species and populations around the world.Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=D49ZgegAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao |
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| Graduate Students | For Future Lab Members: Graduate opportunities | |
Ambrosio Rivera (F2026 - present) 
B.S. - University of California, Santa Cruz |
Hashel Orquiz (F2025 - present) 
B.Sc.- University of Texas, El Paso |
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| Positions open beginning every Fall semester (August). See here for any funded positions. Applications are due by mid-December of the preceding year. |
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| Undergraduate Students | For Future Lab Members: Undergraduate opportunities | |
Heidi Serna
Population dynamics of sea stars in California |
what interests you? | |
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| Laboratory Staff |
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| Marine Lakes Team | ||
| Lori J. Bell Laboratory Manager & Research Scientist Coral Reef Research Foundation |
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| Laura E. Martin Collaborator University of California, Merced |
Gerda Ucharm Marine biologist Coral Reef Research Foundation |
Sharon Patris Marine biologist Coral Reef Research Foundation |
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| Volunteers | ||
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L A B A L U M N I
| Project scientists | ||
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Lauren Schiebelhut: Lauren was (and continues to be) co-PI on our projects with Revive & Restore and The Nature Conservancy exploring genomic signatures of risk and resilience in sunflower sea stars to stressors including sea star wasting. She also held her own grant as PI from the National Science Foundation comparing studying natural recolonization of sunflower stars as a comparison point with plans for rearing and outplanting sea stars in a genomic restoration project. Lauren is currently faculty at Clovis Community College and remains an active collaboraton on these projects. Website: https://laurenschiebelhut.wordpress.com Twitter handle: @LMSchiebelhut GoogleScholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1MSUd00AAAAJ Academia.edu: https://ucmerced.academia.edu/LaurenSchiebelhut ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lauren_Schiebelhut |
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Melissa DeBiasse: Melissa was (and continues) using a comparative genomics approach to understand susceptibility to wasting disease within and between sea star species. Outside of science she likes to run and bake. Melissa is now faculty at Radford University. https://www.radford.edu/directory/profiles/biology-department/melissa-debiasse.html https://melissadebiasse.weebly.com/ |
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| Post-doctoral Scholars | ||
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Dr. Vanessa Guerra (January 2020 - June 2020) Current position: Project Scientist, USGS Vanessa coordinated the startup phase and early fieldwork for our12-species population and community genomics project under the auspices of the California Conservation Genomics Consortium with the goal of understanding variation in susceptibilities to environmental change, species interactions, and the extent to which (and why) the historical demographies of interacting species in key habitats have been individualistic or concerted. |
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Dr. Dannise Ruiz (February 2017 - March 2019) Current position: Faculty, University of Maryland, Eastern Shore University of Maryland, Eastern Shore I am a marine biologist by training and a postdoctoral scholar with the UC Conservation Genomics Consortium. My general interests include the origins and maintenance of variation in natural populations. Marine mortality events can cause a rapid change of variation in populations over wide geographic scales. At the Dawson lab, I work on the genomics of the sea star, Pisaster ochraceous. We examine how Pisaster populations respond to the sea star-wasting disease. My aim is to characterize how the sea star-wasting disease affects sea star populations by looking at genome-level responses to the disease. email: dannise.ruiz@gmail.com |
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Dr. Lauren Schiebelhut(October 2017 - January 2019) Subsequent position: Postdoctoral Scholar, UC Davis Building on Lauren's PhD thesis research, which we leveraged into a proposal that was funded by the US NSF, Lauren led our field and lab campaigns to document and understand the consequences of wasting disease on sea stars in the northeastern Pacific. While focusing on the ochre sea star, and particularly an incredible decadal time-series documenting its genetic dynamics during recovery after wasting decreased, she also collected other stars for comparisons and contrasts. |
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Dr. Giovanni Rapacciuolo(July 2017 - November 2018) Subsequent position: Research scientist, California Academy of Sciences Gio was a Postdoc within the Dimensions of Biodiversity project on Palau marine lakes. His research focused on the spatiotemporal drivers of biodiversity and extinction risk across a variety of ecological systems. Additionally, he is interested in the detection and attribution of species’ recent range shifts using historical data sources, such as repeated ecological surveys and museum specimens. Find out more about Gio at giorapacciuolo.com email: giorapac@gmail.com |
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Dr. Cynthia Hays(2010 & 2011) Current position: Faculty, Keene State College I'm an evolutionary ecologist, and most of my research focuses on the interplay between ecological genetics (e.g. local adaptation, rates of inbreeding) and the distributions of marine 'plants', mostly macroalgae and seagrasses. In the Dawson lab, I am contributing to a multicampus collaboration with University of California PIs Mike Dawson, Rick Grosberg, Pete Raimondi, Brian Gaylord and John Largier funded by the University of California's Coastal Environmental Quality Initiative. The goal of this project is to begin to explore the links between (1) community characteristics such as species diversity, abundance patterns, and similarity in composition across sites, (2) population genetic characteristics, including genetic diversity, patterns of allelic richness, and genetic structure across sites, of common invertebrate and algal species found in rocky intertidal habitats along the California coastline, and to examine those links in light of (3) the nearshore physical oceanography of this region and hypothesized patterns of connectivity among sites. |
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Dr. Keith Bayha(2008 - 2010) Current position: Project Manager - CBRN Scientific Analyst for Noblis-ESI, Washington DC I am interested in the molecular systematics, phylogeography, population genetics and invasion genetics of scyphozoan jellyfish and ctenophores. I am working on the NSF funded REVSYS project (a collaboration between the Dawson Lab and Allen Collins at the Smithsonian Institution) examining the phylogenetic relationships, both molecular and morphological, among the semaeostome jellyfish (Cnidaria: Scyphozoa), a group that includes moon jellies, sea nettles and the lion’s mane jellyfish of Sherlock Holmes' fame. Although these jellyfish cause extensive problems worldwide as blooming and invasive species, taxonomic knowledge of this group (as is true of jellyfish in general) is relatively poor. By combining morphological and genetic data, we will greatly contribute to knowledge of species diversity within the group, morphological characters that delineate species and evolutionary relationships among species. |
| Laboratory Managers | ||
| Mira Parekh Summer 2013 - Fall 2016  |
Adam Rosso 2016  |
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| Anh Nguyen (AY2012-2013) (formerly undergrad researcher and volunteer) |
Biz Green (AY2015) |
Sarah Abboud (2010) (enrolled as graduate student in 2011) |
| Lauren Schiebelhut (2009-2010) (enrolled as graduate student in 2010) |
Julia Vo (2007-2009)  (subsequently enrolled as CSULA grad student) |
Joan Lehman (2008)  (subsequently enrolled as graduate student in 2009) |
| Visitors | Volunteers | Undergraduates | ||
Mariana Rocha de Souza Madlen Friedrich Sabah Ul-Hasan Gerlien Verhaegen Sofie Rutsaert Giorgio Aglieri Celia Churchill Barbara Scholz Mariana Souza Miguel Fernandez |
Judith Bayardo-Guzman Serafino Bodavos Annie Schimon |
Siya Agrawal Charles Hu Sierra Montes Daisy Ramos Roxanna Khalili Rebecca Armstrong Evan Gong Carolina Karuppiah Satya Karuppiah Sravani Mylavarapu Judith Bayardo-Guzman Kameron Jones Angelica Nava Victoria Onwu Kiran Chauhan Jason Doornenbal Bryanna Ludwig Aman Ahuja Moon Park Kirandeep Bains Garret Arauz Lubna Aman Carly Stilphen Alfredo Villicana-Bedolla David Ona Vera Diaz Elain Nguyen Emily Wilson Kimberly Yan |
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