REU Site: Biology of animal movement and performance

Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Brown University

Brown University is home to a group of scientists who conduct cutting-edge research on the causes and consequences of animal movement and performance. Focal species span flies to humans to dinosaurs, and work is done at nearly all levels of analysis. Our REU program aims to bring students into this vibrant community, where they can work with a diverse set of mentor to learn how to perform research. At the same time, REU participants will partake in a rigorous professional development program that fosters inclusivity and community, while providing enduring and continuous support for careers in academia and research.

Further questions about the program can be directed to Dr. Matthew Fuxjager (mattehew_fuxjager@brown.edu) OR DR. TAIESE BINGHAM-HICKMAN (TAIESE_BINGHAM@BROWN.EDU).

Participate

Recruitment for this REU program will occur in partnership with The Leadership Alliance. This consortium of approximately 35 academic institutions across the US seeks to both train and mentor students from historically underrepresented groups in summer research programs and provide sustained support for careers in STEM.

Further questions about the leadership alliance and applications to the program can be directed to Samantha Andersen (samantha_andersen@brown.edu)

Program Logistics

Our program will annually support 10 students to come to Brown to participate in a range of exciting research projects in the realm of ecology, evolution, and organismal biology. The program is 10 weeks long, beginning in June and ending in August. All student participants will receive a generous stipend, travel support to and from Brown, and accommodation in the Brown dorms for the entire length of the program.

Eligibility

Basic eligibility guidelines are determined by the National Science Foundation. Applicants who are interested in receiving NSF support must be 1) a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or permanent resident and (2) a rising sophomore, junior, or senior during the summer you will be conducting research; students who are graduating in the spring or summer of 2023 are not eligible for the program. Otherwise, applicants are expected to have a GPA of at least 3.0, or equivalent. We encourage all students to apply for this program, especially students from traditionally underrepresented groups in fields of ecology and evolutionary biology (i.e., African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, other Pacific Islanders, students with disabilities, first generation college students, and U.S. veterans). We also encourage applicants from institutions across the USA that have limited research opportunities (e.g., community colleges).

Faculty Mentors

Below, read excerpts from the laboratory websites from our diverse team of faculty mentors (listed alphabetically). If you’re interested in their work, click on the faculty member’s name to learn more!

The Brainerd Lab integrates studies of anatomy, physiology and biomechanics toward a more complete understanding of vertebrate morphology and evolution. Recent work has focused on the development and applications of a new 3D imaging technology, X-ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology (XROMM). With XROMM, the lab can now visualize and study the natural motions of bones and joints within living animals.

What students might do:

• Use X-ray Motion Analysis Software (XMALab) to analyze the motion of animals from x-ray videos

• Do dissections of mice (postmortem)

• Do surgery on live mice

• Record X-ray videos of mouse feeding and/or locomotion

The Breuer Lab studies the aeromechanics of animal flight, understanding how both birds and bats utilize their unique morphology to accomplish extraordinary flight performance. In all these studies, the lab explores how animals respond to complex disturbances in the environment, what muscles and sensory systems are used to control flight, and how much energy individuals require to fly in these complex environments.

Work students might do:

• Use Matlab-based programs to analyse flight trajectories of birds and bats

• Use Particle Image Velocimetry in a wind tunnel to measure velocity fields generated by animals and bio-inspired robots

• Design, fabricate and test bio-inspired robots using CAD and 3D printing tools

Research in the Caves lab lies at the intersection of behavioral ecology, animal vision, and evolution. Using marine cleaning interactions, in which small “cleaner shrimp” remove and eat parasites from their reef fish “clients,” we ask questions about 1) animal vision, including how cooperative partners perceive and recognize one another; 2) mutualistic cooperation, including how animals communicate with one another during cooperative interactions and how cooperative behavior evolves; and 3) the behavioral ecology of cleaning mutualisms, including how the broader abiotic and biotic context impacts the outcome of cleaning interactions.

Work students might do:

• Annotate and analyze cleaner and client behaviors from videos collected in nature

• Help run behavioral assays on live cleaner shrimp in the lab, to test their responses to various visual stimuli

• Assist with calibrated color photography and analysis of cleaner shrimp and client fish color patterns”

The Fuxjager Lab studies the physiological and evolutionary bases of animal communication. In this regard, the lab is especially interested in the way that different neural and muscular systems are specialized to support the production of elaborate social displays that incorporate dance and gesture. This research integrates a wide range of techniques and approaches that spans field work in the amazon to molecular work at the bench.

Work students might do:

• conduct bioacoustic analyses on animal vocalizations and other social sounds

• Help run molecular genetic and histological analyses on brain and muscle tissue

• Document and analyze behavioral displays from free-living and/or captive animals

Our goal is to understand how animals gather information and make decisions in contexts like competition. We are currently focusing on tests of how mantis shrimp safely resolve fights over territory by exchanging spring-powered strikes on each other's armored tailplates. To do this, we integrate fieldwork with experimental behavioral ecology and techniques from biomechanics and physiology. We are question-, not taxon-based, and study other systems, including banded mongooses in Uganda and fiddler crabs in Rhode Island (a system we are currently developing).

Work students might do:

• Annotate videos of competing mantis shrimp, and analyze the resulting data.

• Conduct and analyze data from high-speed videography of mantis shrimp striking objects (e.g., competitors, prey).

• Use tools like CT scanning and Scanning Electron Microscopy to characterize biomechanics and morphology.

• Analyze large-scale datasets of contest and social behavior in species like banded mongooses.

The Huerta-Sanchez Lab studies how evolutionary processes, in particular natural selection and population demography, have shaped the human genetic variation that we can observe today and how such variation relates to human disease and environmental adaptations. The lab develops theoretical, computational and data-driven approaches to address these questions.

Work students might do:

• Write python scripts to analyze human genomes and archaic genomes (e.g. Neanderthals and Denisovans)

• Run evolutionary simulations under a human demographic model to test how different evolutionary parameters affect patterns of genetic variation

• Plotting results from 1 & 2 using python or R

The Kartzinel Lab works at the nexus of biomedicine and conservation biology. The Lab integrates approaches from experimental field ecology, molecular biology, and ecoinformatics, with the aim of fostering exchanges between ecologists and biomedical scientists who share interests in how our environments influence health and fitness. Current research priorities include understanding the structure and function food webs, the establishment and evolution of symbioses, the diversity and dynamics of ecological communities under climate change, human-livestock-wildlife interactions, and the population genetics of protected species.

Work that students might do:

• Lab protocols to extract DNA and run PCR

• Bioinformatic strategies for managing large amounts of DNA sequence data

• Community ecology theories to understand how species interact in nature

Work in the Kartzinel Lab focuses on understanding the factors that influence diversity in natural populations. The group’s work combines genomic tools with field and greenhouse experiments to explore how population history, environment, and life-history traits impact genetic, epigenetic, and phenotypic variation.

Research in the Ramachandran Lab addresses problems in population genetics and evolutionary theory, generally using humans as a study system. The Lab’s work uses mathematical modeling, applied statistical methods, and computer simulations to make inferences from genetic data. Current work is addressing questions like: what loci are under strong adaptive selection in the human genome? are there genetic pathways we can identify that underlie common diseases such as diabetes? does genetic variation account for some ethnic disparities in disease incidence and outcome? what features of human demographic history can we infer from genetic data alone?

Work that students might do:

• Use Python to visualize and explore large human genetic datasets

• Use Python to scrape articles and study the use of certain data types in genetics over time

• Use Python to simulate evolutionary genetics processes

The Rand Lab is interested in understanding how natural selection acts on genes and genomes. A major focus is to study the mitochondrial genome and its interactions with the nuclear genome, and how this interaction influences animal performance, evolutionary fitness, and aging. A second major interest is how environmental stressors influence the genetic composition of populations. The goals of the lab’s research are to identify the genetic interactions that allow organisms to adapt to environmental heterogeneity.

The Roberts Lab uses the tools of biomechanics and functional morphology to study how animals move. Among vertebrates, the mechanical behavior of muscles, tendons, and bones is quite conserved at the tissue and cellular levels. The diversity of locomotor performance results in large part from the arrangement and interaction of these components. The Lab’s research investigates the integrated function of muscles, tendons, and skeletal lever systems to better understand the evolution of musculoskeletal design.

The long-term goal of the Serre Lab is to understand the neural computations supporting visual perception. Our research emphasizes the development of computational models of the visual cortex – addressing topics such as object recognition, attention, and perceptual organization, as well as computer vision and machine learning methods for analyzing biological and biomedical data. In particular, we have developed numerous computer vision and machine learning techniques, which have been applied to automate the analysis of behavioral and other biological data.

Work that students might do:

• Help develop and run machine learning pipelines for neuroscience data analysis

• Help develop and run computer vision pipelines for automating behavioral analysis

The Swartz Lab explores the mechanistic basis of flight in bats. This will not only teach us how bats fly, but also shed light on the origins and diversification of flight within the bat lineage. It helps us interpret the similarities and differences in the evolution of flight among bats, birds, pterosaurs, and insects, and elucidates facets of the ecology and physiology of flying animals. Flying animals share characteristics dictated by the constraints of physics, and our research program seeks to delineate the aspects of the structure, physiology, and mechanics of bats and their wings that distinctively shape bat flight.

Work students might do:

• Carry out analyses of high-speed video motion capture of natural bat flight behaviors 

• Help quantify features of wing muscle and sensory system anatomy that contribute to flight performance using microCT scanning, microscopy, and computer-based image analysis

Research in the Tingle Lab addresses 1) the evolution of behavioral, morphological, and physiological traits related to snake locomotion, and 2) how these relationships play out over different timescales. We are particularly interested in biomechanics as an approach for studying the link between behavior and underlying traits. The biomechanics toolkit offers an exciting avenue for rigorously quantifying behavior and performance. Several past and ongoing projects also employ phylogenetic comparative methods to study evolutionary morphology, and others have involved high-speed videography combined with statistical methods such as structural equation modeling to test hypothesized causal relationships and correlations among morphological, kinematic, and performance variables. 

What students might do:

• Use CT scans and/or dissect preserved specimens to study snake morphology

• Collect and analyze video data to study snake locomotion

• Use R to wrangle data, conduct statistical analyses, and/or make figures