I’m a life-long learner who is passionate about understanding why we observe certain patterns in the ecological world and sharing that passion with others. I deeply care about mentoring and teaching students to prepare them as the next generation of critical thinking, culturally informed, and service-oriented leaders. For my research, I test ecological theories by gathering empirical evidence and applying results to management, generally in aquatic ecosystems, especially with fish. I enjoy homesteading, gardening, cooking, baking, camping, kayaking, backpacking, traveling, reading fantasy novels, and playing board and video games. Also a parent to several scaley and furry creatures.
I studied the interactive and individual effects of protein quality and quantity on fish growth using Zebrafish. Feeding high quality protein like fishmeal to satiation is expensive and has negative environmental impacts, so we often use alternative proteins to replace fishmeal. However, these alternative proteins like soymeal have shown reduced growth and acceptance in fish. This study found that protein quality and quantity individually impacted fish growth and feeding efficiency differently, but the interaction between the two was also important. Specifically, fish fed a low quality protein at high quantity still showed similar growth to fish fed high quality protein, but had greatly reduced feeding efficiency. Likewise, fish fed low quality and quantity feed had both reduced growth and feeding efficiency compared to those fed a high quality feed. These findings underscored the importance of considering interactions between feed quality and quantity and measuring multiple variables (growth, feeding efficiency) when designing feeding experiments and in feed selection in aquaculture.