Lisa Lugo

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Lisa joined the lab upon transferring to Cal State L.A. with support from our NIH-funded Bridges program, and began work as an undergraduate research studying how waterborne chemical signals influence reproductive investment by sea slugs. This project built on the work of former M.S. student Angela Llaban, which showed that egg masses of both Alderia species induced greater short-term egg laying in their own species, but inhibited egg laying by the other species. It remained unclear was whether slugs responded to physical cues of the egg mass, or pheromonal cues released by egg masses or adult slugs. Lisa found that in both species, dissolved egg-mass cues weakly stimulate short-term egg laying by conspecifics but act by increasing egg production bysmall slugs, and are inhibitory to egg laying by larger individuals. Adult slug cues also weakly stimulated egg production in A. willowi, but the inductive effect of both cues cancelled out in combination. For her M.S. work, Lisa is testing whether pheromonal cues change patterns of sperm usage and precedence in these hermaphrodites, which can store sperm for weeks; this may provide insight into how sexual selection acts, and how some forms (e.g., cryptic female choice) may be circumvented by pheromonal manipulation.

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As an undergraduate, Lisa spent a summer studying shark biology in South Africa. She presented her research at the 2017 Western Society of Malacologists meeting in L.A.; 2017 Western Society of Naturalists meeting in Pasadena; 2018 Cal State L.A. student research symposium; and 2018 American Malacological Society meeting in Hawaii.