About

Students

Welcome

 

arch, I will be studying the post-hatching life stages of cephalopods (paralarval and juvenile) in the Gulf of Mexico. I’ll identify specimens collected by the Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program, then conduct statistical analysis to examine their distribution and how environmental factors affect their abundance. To analyze vertical distribution, I’ll split the paralarvae into groups based on the depth at which they were collected and use multidimensional scaling to test for the presence of unique species assemblages. I’ll repeat this process with the latitudinal collection locations to examine any differences between shelf and offshore species assemblages. The second portion of my research will use stepwise regression to determine which environmental factors have the greatest impact on paralarval abundance. For both aspects, I’ll also be calculating measures of biodiversity such as the Shannon-Weiner diversity index.