About Me

I am fascinated by the diversity of forms and behaviors among open-ocean invertebrates. While marine vertebrates are fast, smart, robust, and successful as torpedoes with a frontal mouth, there are many equally-successful animals that are weak, slow, small, soft, and delicate — living in the daunting, vast, structureless void of the midwater. Evolution has produced extremely creative and fascinating ways of surviving in this environment.

I earned my Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Yale University in 2021, focused on siphonophore diets, the evolution of their tentacle prey-capture apparatus, and the roles of vertical distribution and prey selection in their trophic ecology. I then did a postdoc in the Sutherland Lab at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Oregon, focused on the evolution of colonial architecture in salps and its relationship to swimming performance. For every group of marine pelagic invertebrates, my primary research interest has been the diversity of forms, understanding its evolutionary history, and how this diversity impacts their ecological roles in the ecosystem.

I am back in Spain and no longer pursuing an academic career. However, I am open to collaborating on projects as a coauthor. I am open to working as a marine zooplankton research technician or in invertebrate zoology collections at museums of natural history.