MEET THE TEAM
SHELBY L. ZIEGLER, Ph.D.
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Dr. Shelby Ziegler is an Assistant Professor of Ecology in the Biology Department at Villanova University. She completed her B.S. in Biology at the College of William and Mary and Ph.D. in Ecology at UNC Chapel Hill (UNC Institute of Marine Sciences). She is an ecologist conducting interdisciplinary research that investigates environmental variation and anthropogenic stressors on faunal communities in marine and aquatic systems. Her work spans across multiple levels of biological organization from cells and organisms to communities and ecosystems using a combination of field sampling, laboratory experiments, molecular techniques, satellite-derived data, and geospatial analysis to test questions related to the conservation of aquatic and marine systems.
Graduate students
Elianna Fox
Prior to starting her Master's at VU, Ellie graduated from the University of Georgia with a BS in Marine Biology and worked as a lab manager at Jackson State University. Her master's research is focusing on drivers of fiddler crab distribution across the salt marsh platform and how fiddler crab density influences their ecosystem engineering function.
Laini Legere
Laini graduated with a BS in Biology from VU in 2024 with a focus on microbiology and bioinformatics. She then worked as research technician with zebrafish at Rutgers University before deciding to come back to pursue her MS. For her Master's research, Laini is examining the interaction of temperature and disease on oyster filtration and physiology.
Gianna Parrish
Gianna received her BS in Cell & Molecular Biology from West Chester University and is interested in understanding how environmental exposures and toxicants affect aquatic organisms and ecosystems. Gianna’s research will focus on heavy metal contamination and its transfer through marsh food webs across a marine-to-freshwater gradient.
Undergraduate students
Peyton Gibbs - '27
Peyton joined the lab in Spring 2025 and is working towards a B.S in Biology. Peyton is interested in understanding how multiple stressors such as temperature, pH and salinity interact to affect coastal ecosystems. For her independent research, she is conducting laboratory experiments to determine the influence predators (blue crabs & stone crab) and temperature on intraspecific fiddler crab behaviors.
Addie Arvidson - '27
Addie joined the lab in fall 2025 and is majoring in Comprehensive Sciences at VU. Addie is interested in disease ecology and will be studying the interactions of temperature and predator presence on oyster disease dynamics.
Ella Thomas - '28
Ella joined the lab in the fall of 2025 and is a Biology major at VU. This year past, Ella got her feet wet learning about animal care and husbandry and assisting on multiple projects in the lab including oyster filtration and how parasites influence snail feeding behavior. She will be pursuing an independent project to understand how temperature and disease in oysters affects their susceptibility to predation by crab predators.