I have several (perhaps ambitious) ideas for how research in the lab will start. Because it's a lot all at once, I am letting serendipity help a little. Here's an outline of how the lab is beginning to manifest itself:
Mudskippers
I am fish-sitting a mudskipper until the end of the summer. These are amphibious fishes, and are perhaps the most terrestrial modern fishes when you exclude amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, which are technically Sarcopterygian fishes. By watching this fish eat, I began to think about how the media in which it is doing so might affect coordination between locomotion and feeding. For instance, gravity is much more influential in air than in water, and this may result in a different contribution of the locomotor system. Krijn Michel has already shown that feeding can be different, and that mudskippers have a really cool "hydrodynamic tongue" that they use to suction feed on land, but how is the locomotor system involved? Since I have a sample size of 1 fish currently, and I managed to recruit an undergraduate with an interest in this idea (Emily Mahoney), I thought it might be worth at least getting some preliminary video of locomotion during prey capture. Her first steps are going to be to film the fish feeding in two environments and analyze the locomotor structures being used as well as the resulting kinematics. This will probably lead into a larger project at some point (and grants??), but for now it's something that will keep her busy for a few months.
Centrarchids
In researching Georgia Southern for my interview, I became really interested in the Fall Line, and the geographic division between the rolling hills of the Piedmont and the flat Coastal Plain. I have also always had a soft spot for Centrarchids, the group of fishes that include bluegill, basses, crappie, and many of the freshwater fishes that people like to catch in South Georgia. I have also always wanted to do a large-scale phylogenetic analysis of integration, across a whole clade of fishes. Since about 75% of Centrarchids can be found in Georgia, and some of them are only found on one side or the other of the Fall Line, this is the perfect place to explore patterns in this group, particularly in respect to local adaptation, swimming performance, and integration. To get started, I have recruited 2 undergraduates (Alli and Abby Wallace, they're twins!) to start comparing body and fin morphology in some photographs I took several years ago. This will help us make some hypotheses that can then be tested with local fishes. I also recruited a graduate student to help me get started on finding, collecting, and filming fish. Most of this work probably won't take shape until Fall or Spring of next academic year.
Guppies
