Jessika DeJesus

For her thesis, Jessika studied development and swimming behavior at the larval stage in tropical sea slugs and determined how these factors may create unusual patterns of genetic structure among populations. She compiled development data (larval type, presence of extra capsular yolk, egg and shell size, hatching data, etc.) from her own studies and the lab's unpublished data for over 100 species. She also cultured larvae for several species to competence and quantified larval swimming behavior through video analysis at hatching, one week old, and two weeks old to see if behavior differed among species with the same larval type (planktotrophic and lecithotrophic) at various life stages. While her development work helped to find three additional poecilogonous species in clade Sacoglossa, her behavioral work could help improve oceanographic models and predictions of larval dispersal and connectivity to aid future management and conservation efforts. 

 

Jessika came to the lab from California State University at Long Beach (CSULB) where she studied the ecology of marine worms in an urban wetland as well as participated in the restoration and preservation of salt marshes throughout Huntington Beach, CA. During her M.S., she attended a field course on sea slug biodiversity and conducted field work in Bocas del Toro, Panama and Maui, Hawaii. Now that she has completed her MS, she plans on working for an agency that specializes in marine conservation, restoration, and management.