The Jones Lab

Kenyon Mobley, Ph.D., 2007 (Kenyon's Website)

Kenyon's dissertation research focused on geographic and temporal variation in pipefish mating systems. He also studied a number of other important topics related to sexual selection, such as postcopulatory sexual selection and reproductive compensation. He's currently a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology.

Charlyn Partridge, Ph.D., 2009 (Link to Charlyn)

Charlyn's dissertation work focused on the effects of environmental contaminants on pipefish physiology and behavior. Among other things, she studied how endocrine disruptors affect male pipefish morphology and mating behavior, mercury contamination in pipefish populations, postcopulatory sexual selection, and pipefish population structure. She's currently a postdoc with Bryan Neff at the University of Western Ontario.

Sunny Scobell, Ph.D., 2011

Sunny's research concerned the evolutionary relationship between sexual selection and aggression. In the sex-role-reversed Gulf pipefish, she investigated the role of hormones in mediating female aggression. Sunny's recent review of this topic provides a comprehensive overview of what's known about hormones and behavior in syngnathid fishes.

Kim Paczolt, Ph.D., 2012

Kim's dissertation research focused on postcopulatory sexual selection in pipefish. Kim conducted a number of studies to investigate offspring survivorship within the brood pouches of pregnant males. Her demonstration that males appear to discriminate against the offspring of small females during the pregnancy was a major breakthrough in our understanding of sexual selection in Gulf pipefish. Kim is currently a postdoc with Gerald Wilkinson at the University of Maryland.

Clay Small, Ph.D., 2012

Clay is interested in sexual conflict and how this process affects patterns of molecular evolution. His dissertation research used next-generation, high-throughput DNA sequencing to identify the genes involved in male pregnancy in multiple pipefish and seahorse species and to elucidate patterns of molecular evolution in these genes. Clay is currently a postdoc with Bill Cresko at University of Oregon.

Nick Ratterman, Ph.D., 2012 (Nick's Website)

Nick is interested in the coevolution of sexually selected traits and mating preferences. His dissertation work used a simulation-based modeling approach to understand the evolution of genetic correlations under Fisherian and other kinds of sexual selection. He's also used Drosophila melanogaster as an empirical system in which to investigate the evolution of female mating preference functions.

April Harlin-Cognato, Postdoc, 2005-2006 (April's Faculty Page)

April's now an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University. She studied the molecular evolution of male pregnancy genes while she was in the Jones Lab, and we're still collaborating with her on studies involving microarrays and next-generation sequencing, which we're using to understand the evolution and function of the pipefish brood pouch.

Eric Hoffman, Postdoc, 2003-2004 (Eric's Faculty Page)

Eric worked in the Jones Lab at Georgia Tech, before we moved to Texas A&M University in 2004. He worked on a variety of topics, all of which fell into the categories of molecular ecology or evolutionary genetics. He's now an Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida.

Seth Coleman, Postdoc (Rosenthal Lab), 2006-2008 (Seth's Faculty Page)

Seth was actually a postdoc in the Rosenthal Lab, but he hung around our lab enough that we considered him an honorary lab member. Plus, we wanted a picture of a dude holding a snake on here. Seth's an Assistant Professor at Gonzaga University.

Cristin Harper, 2010-2012

Cristin worked with Kim Paczolt and Emily Rose on the mating systems of northern pipefish and Gulf pipefish exposed to endocrine disrupting chemicals.

Alex Saucedo, 2010-2013

Alex worked on many different projects in the lab, including studies of parentage in pipefish and genes involved in male pregnancy.

Kevin Records, 2011-2013

Kevin worked with Sarah Flanagan and Emily Rose on various projects. One of his major projects addressed sexual selection on the colorful bands present on Gulf pipefish females.

Sarah Yun, 2012-2013

Sarah worked with Sarah Flanagan to study the morphology and secondary sexual traits of Gulf pipefish.