Student Scholars & Faculty Mentors
Projects funded by our internal grants program. Search the table to find students or faculty mentors that share in your interests, and could help you achieve your goals in research, creative activity, or service.
Endocrine Disruption in Mosquitofish Social Networking
Name: Smith,
Advisor: Isaac Ligocki
Department: BIOL
Award: Student Research Grant
Abstract: My aim through this project is to understand how environmentally relevant concentrations of endocrine disrupting pollutants affect the social networks of the eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia holobrooki), and what role hormones may play in moderating these behavioral shifts. We will evaluate behavioral and hormonal shifts in fish exposed to estradiol (a hormone that naturally elicits the development of female-typical traits and behaviors in mosquitofish) and to one of two concentrations of PFAS, an endocrine disrupting pollutant that is widespread in waterways in the eastern United States. I hypothesize that exposure to endocrine disrupting pollutants, at environmentally relevant concentrations, will alter female mosquitofish social networks.