MENTORING

During my PhD, I have had the opportunity to directly mentor undergraduate students and research technicians. The following is a list of mentees and a brief description of their research foci.

Lauren Clance

Lauren graduated from UNC Chapel Hill with a B.S. in Biology in 2017. Lauren assists on a project researching the effects of marsh islands on fish and crustacean communities. Lauren's research is focusing on how different size marshes influence juvenile fish condition and energy content. Her analysis focuses on pinfish, spot and striped mullet. Lauren is also conducting a meta-analysis on the effect of contaminants on predator-prey interaction in aquatic and marine ecosystems.

​Lily Olmo

Lily is an undergraduate at UNC Chapel Hill. In the fall of 2017, Lily conducted an independent research project through the UNC Institute for the Environment. Lily created barricades along the marsh edge to determine the feasibility of blocking off access to the marsh surface for nekton. Lily tested the barricades functionality with predation assays along side of nets and traps. Lily returned in the summer of 2018 to conduct her honor's thesis work. She investigated how predator-prey interactions vary across marsh islands of varying edge to area ratio.

Marianna Miller

Marianna recently graduated from UNC Chapel Hill with a B.S. of Environmental Science and will be working as a research technician until October 2018. Marianna initially came to IMS in the fall of 2016 while spending a semester at the coast through the UNC Institute for the Environment. For her independent research, Marianna manipulated marsh shoot density using wooden dowels as a Spartina alterniflora mimic to determine the importance of habitat complexity on predator-prey interactions in salt marshes.

Andrew McMains

Andrew graduated in the Spring of 2017 from the University of Montana Western. Andrew most recently worked with the NC Division of Marine Fisheries in Elizabeth City, NC assisting with fisheries research in Albemarle Sound. Andrew will be working as at research technician until October 2018 on a variety of marsh projects. Andrew will be involved in night sampling, predator-prey tethering experiments and a residency study tagging juvenile fishes.

Claire is an undergraduate at the University of Tampa completing a degree in Environmental Sciences with a focus in Marine Science. Claire interned with Shelby in the Summer of 2018. She assisted in marsh habitat sampling, fish collections, fish dissections for stable isotope analysis, and a variety of other projects with the UNC Coastal Fish Ecology Lab.