Research Interests
Broadly, our research focuses on the ecology of marine invertebrates in the Caribbean. This envelopes a wide variety of topics. Much of our past research has focused on the behavior of marine parasites, cleaners, and fish associated with those invertebrates. We are quickly expanding our research to investigate behaviors and ecology of other marine invertebrates, such as corals, and assessing the feasibility of differrent types of aquaculture in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
1. Sensory ecology of small marine invertebrates
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All marine organisms rely on chemical signals at some point in their life. These chemical signals are typically associated with different fitness-related behaviors, such as food-finding, habitat location, conspecific-finding, or predator avoidance.
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Ectoparasites are a unique sub-group of parasites that live outside the bodies of their host and therefore typically must actively traverse their ecosystems at some point throughout their lifecycles. This can include finding a host, settling in a specific habitat, locating a mate, and avoiding possible predators. Ectoparasites have evolved a plethora of different mechanisms to successfully achieve these goals. While terrestrial parasites have received a wealth of attention in this subject, marine parasites have not. There are few species that we know anything about when it comes to their sensory ecology and how they navigate their often complex lifecycles.
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I am primarily focused on the sensory ecology of the fish-parasitic gnathiid isopod. Gnathiid isopods are one of the most common marine ectoparasites that can be found circumglobally, from the shallows to depths of over 3,000 m. In the Caribbean, gnathiids are generalist parasites that infect over 40 different species of fishes and invertebrates. However, they do infect hosts at varying levels with some getting 100s of gnathiids in a short period of time while others get few to none. For my Master's thesis, I showed that gnathiids do actively use chemical cues when locating their hosts but that does not explain any susceptibility differences we see in hosts (Vondriska et al., 2020). For my Ph.D. I plan to expand on this research to investigate all aspects of the gnathiid lifecycle and determine which cues (visual, chemical, environmental, etc.) are used throughout.
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2. Behavior of cleaning organisms on Caribbean coral reefs
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Cleaner organisms are essential on coral reefs. These cleaners (typically shrimps, gobies, or wrasses) have a mutualistic relationship with reef fish where they will consume parasites and dead tissues on the fishes body. This provides the cleaners with a steady diet while improve the 'clients' overall fitness. My research in this subject has previously focused on the Pederson's cleaner shrimp, spotted cleaner shrimp, and neon cleaner gobies. Using remotely deployed underwater cameras my collaborators at the American Natural History Museum and Operation Wallacea (UK) and I have been able to explore various aspects of cleaner behavior and ecology, including the evolution of cheating behaviors (Titus et al., 2019), possible mimicry in cleaner species (Titus et al., 2017), and ecological differences in cleaning interactions between nearby reefs (Romain et al., 2020).
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