March 2023 – We are excited to have an opportunity for a postdoctoral researcher to join our international collaborative team investigating the conservation and ecological genomics of golden dorado! This position also will have opportunities to develop additional projects in other marine and freshwater fish molecular ecology. Check out the full job description here!
March 2023 – We recently submitted a paper outlining sampling requirements and considerations for model construction for a close-kin mark-recapture experiment for elasmobranchs! While the paper makes its way through the peer review process, you can view the pre-print here.
June 2022 – Our research studying the growth and physiology of sardines in warming temperatures was covered in the California Sea Grant newsletter! A picture of the respirometry setup is below; read more here!
February 2022 – Our project using genomics and telemetry to understand climate change resilience in green turtles at Fernando de Noronha is highlighted on the TAMAR webpage! Read more about it here!
Photo Credit: Michele Roth
January 2022 – We are beyond excited to share our new preprint of the assembly and analysis of near error-free reference genomes for the leatherback and green sea turtles! We are very thankful for all the hard work of our amazing team and look forward to the next phase of our project-creating similar resources for the remaining five species!
August 2021 – Dr. Komoroske and Shreya Banerjee presented their research at the Asia-Pacific Marine Turtle Genetic Working Group Workshop on Novel and Alternative Genetic/Genomic Tools. Sorry you missed it? Check out recordings of their presentations and many more from the workshop series on their website here!
July 2021 – We are excited to partner with Revive & Restore’s Wild Genomes Initiative for our Sea Turtle Genomes of the World project! This research will create high-quality, annotated reference genomes for all extant species of sea turtles and make the resources publicly available to support global sea turtle biology and conservation research!
June 2021 – Happy World Sea Turtle Day! Check out our recent article “What makes a sea turtle?” to learn about the how and why we are assembling high quality genomes for all seven sea turtle species!
June 2021 – How does local adaptation influence species’ vulnerability to ocean warming? Congratulations to Drew on the publication of his first Master’s chapter investigating this question by warming tolerance across the native and invasive ranges of a marine snail! Check out the article here.
May 2021 – Congratulations to Shreya and the whole team on their new paper examining gene expression in blood marine turtles out today in BMC Genomics! We compare difference across species and populations of green turtles and highlight potential future uses for minimally invasive sampling with gene expression biomarkers.
December 2020 – Though this year has been very challenging, we are ending with some great accomplishments- Nadia Fernandez passed her PhD qualifying exam and Dr. Tanya Lama gave a great dissertation defense seminar on the conservation genomics and climate adaptation of Canada lynx. Congratulations Nadia and Dr. Lama!!
August 2020 – Very excited to announce that we have been awarded support with Dr. Brian Cheng from the NSF Ocean Sciences program to investigate local adaptation to climate in oyster drills! This integrative project combines ecology, physiology and genomics to understand the role of evolution and environmental variability in species’ response to climate change. Learn more about this project here!
Dr. Cheng is recruiting a PhD student to join the project in Fall 2021, see the advertisement here:
🚨We are recruiting a PhD student 🚨 to join our #NSF funded project to study local adaptation to climate change in predatory oyster drills! @UMassAmherst @UMassECo @LKomoroske Please R/T and apply here! https://t.co/SShfSYiz3r pic.twitter.com/zXCEIIIT7U
— Brian Cheng (@chengsbrian) August 21, 2020
August 2020 – OEB PhD student Jamie Stoll was awarded funding through the NSF-INTERN program to work with NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center and the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center on developing genomic tools for marine turtle conservation! Jamie will be working closely with scientists at these institutions to design a high-throughput genotyping panel for green sea turtles, take part in integrating genomic data in the upcoming status review for green turtles, and work with the marine turtle field teams in sampling, monitoring and habitat assessments. This is a great opportunity for her to network and enhance her professional skills to prepare her for a career in scientific research outside of academia. Congratulations Jamie!!
July 2020 – PhD student Nadia Fernandez and Lisa Komoroske were selected as one of the 2020 advisor-student pairs for the prestigious Gilliam Fellowship for Advanced Study from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. This fellowship identifies students with strong potential to become leaders in their scientific fields who will also advance diversity, inclusion and equity in STEM.
This fellowship will support Nadia’s innovative dissertation research coupling conservation, citizen science, and evolutionary biology, as well as DEIJ initiatives at UMass led by Lisa. Nadia’s research is focused on understanding the demographic history and population connectivity of golden dorado – a highly valuable sport fish of conservation concern- in South America. Check out the full UMass Amherst highlighted article of this award! Congratulations Nadia and Lisa!
July 2020 – John Swenson was awarded a Small Grant from the Save Our Seas Foundation to develop DNA capture panels that will help us better understand and conserve cownose ray populations along the US East Coast. Read more about the project here.
May 2020– John Swenson was awarded the Steven Berkeley Marine Conservation Fellowship from the American Fisheries Society for his research on Close-Kin Mark-Recapture in elasmobranchs! Congratulations John!!
March 2020- Our field team in Fernando de Noronha, Brazil has been working hard sampling nesting females, in-water males, and loads of hatchlings to estimate climate change effects on green sea turtle sex ratios. Last week we hit our 100th marked nest-it’s going to be a busy next few months!
Our expert field technicians Christina Coppenrath & Julia Basini Martins celebrate the 100th nest laid and marked at sunrise, after a long night of patiently waiting for this female to find the ‘perfect’ spot to lay her eggs. Photos were taken conducting research under permitted activities (including Brazil, FSU & UMass Amherst approved protocols).
February 2020- Want to learn more about our collaborative research in Brazil using genomics and telemetry to understand climate change impacts on green turtle demographics? Check out this article about the project on Projeto TAMAR’s website!
January 2020- Lisa and ECO MS student Jamie Stoll traveled to Oahu to work with the NOAA PIFSC MTBAP team to conduct in-water and beach sampling of juvenile and adult green sea turtles. Jamie did a great job presenting her work on developing SNPs panels for high-throughput genotyping. She’ll be using these new genomic tools to estimate sex ratios and climate change impacts in this population-can’t wait to see what we find out once we get the samples back to the lab!
August 2019- We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher and graduate student or technician to join our research team using genomic tools to understand sea turtle resilience to climate change! See the formal advertisement here -deadline for full consideration is Sept 3 2019.
August 2019- PhD student John Swenson represented the MEC lab presenting his work in progress validating CKMR in elasmobranchs!
I am very proud of @Mobulasana for presenting his Close Kin Mark Recapture research at #AES19 and #JMIH19.
He did a great job describing his work and everyone is very excited for the future of genetic tools in assessment! @LKomoroske, you have an all-star on your hands! pic.twitter.com/R7kKsO2XqH— Dovi Kacev (@findingdovi) August 3, 2019
July 2019- Very excited to launch our new NSF IOS project on green sea turtle mating systems and climate change resilience with PROJETO TAMAR, FSU and OSU in Fernando de Noronha, Brazil! Check out a short write-up of the project in the Inside UMass Newletter, and please contact lkomoroske@umass.edu if interested in opportunities.
Interested in using #Genomics tools to study sea turtle resilience to #climatechange? Formal advert for postdoc and/or grad & tech opportunities coming soon for our @NSF funded project with @Fuentes_MMPB @j_wilson_white pls get in touch if interested & RT!
— Lisa Komoroske (@LKomoroske) July 14, 2019
March 2019– Why do we need high quality genomes like those that are the focus of the Vertebrate Genomes Project? Dr. Gavin Naylor wrote a great, accessible piece that explains the rationale behind these efforts. These reasons are well aligned with how we are thinking about these tools for research in our lab with marine turtle genomes and why we are so excited to be part of the VGP efforts. Check it out!
Feb 2019- MEC Lab members Sarah Emel, Nadia Fernandez, Lisa Komoroske and Tanya Lama had a great time talking about wildlife genomics with the members of the Brattleboro Conservation Commission in their Winter public lecture series. We are very grateful for the invitations to share our research with the community, and have some fun visiting the middle school science class. Check out our presentations:
Dr. Sarah Emel, Part I: Conservation Genetics
Dr. Lisa Komoroske and Nadia Fernandez, M.S., Part II: Genomics in Wildlife Conservation
Feb 2019- Shreya and Lisa traveled to Charleston to present our work on using genomic tools in marine turtle biology and conservation. Great presentations and discussion in the special genomics symposium, and Shreya nailed her first talk presenting on green turtle and leatherback blood transcriptomes!
Jan 2019- We are so excited to welcome Dr. Amy Teffer as a newly minted 2019 David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow! Dr. Teffer will be working with our lab and Dr. Ben Letcher at the USGS Conte Anadromous Research Center to study disease ecology in restored watersheds with improved connectivity, with particular emphasis on brook trout and effects of dam removal in New England. Welcome Amy!!
Nov 2018– We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join our research team studying climate change impacts on California fishes! See the full advertisement here -deadline for full consideration is Jan 15 2019.
Oct 2018– We are thrilled to work with NOAA SWFSC, CA Sea Grant and CA Ocean Protection Council to study the mechanisms of shrinking body sizes in fish under ocean warming! We will be advertising for a post-doctoral researcher to join us on this project soon!
July 2018- Back in the field! Shreya heads down to the leatherback nesting beach at Sandy Point, USVI to get the elusive RNA samples for the genome!
July 2018- Lab technician Shreya Banerjee joined researchers from around the country at DIBSI 2018 at UC Davis to sharpen her bioinformatics skills. Now she’s primed and ready to tackle our marine turtle RNA-Seq data!
April 2018-
Thanks to @VGP_GenomeArk and @erichjarvis for an awesome visit to see where the magic happens! Bonus to see the leatherback running on the Bionano as we speak, so cool!! @Genome10K pic.twitter.com/piXhWH91fp
— Lisa Komoroske (@LKomoroske) April 27, 2018
Jan 2018-
Important new work in @CurrentBiology by @camryndallen, M.Jensen& @NOAAFisheries colleagues showing drastic empirical CC impacts on feminization of sea turtle populations #ClimateChangeIsReal https://t.co/Qa13t4U7nl via @NatGeo
— Lisa Komoroske (@LKomoroske) January 8, 2018
Oct 2017- Wrapped up our RNA-Seq workshop at Scripps Institution of Oceanography-thanks to all the participants, organizers and instructors for a great workshop!! All the materials are available here through SIO Open Data Science.
Had a great time with my fellow instructors teaching and learning this week! #SIOrnaseq2017 pic.twitter.com/qJMr0eovDu
— John McCrow (@JPMcCrow) October 13, 2017
Sept 2017- Just wrapped up Pacific leatherback in-water field work in Northern California. Despite three weeks of bad weather, equipment failures and other obstacles, our fantastic field team persisted!! Honored to work with such a fun and talented group of researchers at NOAA-SWFSC.
Day 2 successful Pacific leatherback inwater sampling & first samples for leatherback genome! #Patienceinthefieldpaysoff pic.twitter.com/jnscej00U6
— Lisa Komoroske (@LKomoroske) September 28, 2017
June 2017 – Excited to share this interview, talking about my path in science and dealing with imposter syndrome and diversity issues.
Here comes another amazing #womaninscience – Meet Lisa Komoroske! @LKomoroske #womeninSTEM #womenempoweringwomen https://t.co/8e17NgKa1k
— The female Scientist (@ScientistFemale) June 7, 2017
June 2017 – Curious how to use genetic/genomic tools in sea turtle biology? Check out our new review in Frontiers in Marine Science!
May 2017 – This post is long overdue; things have been busy with travel and, well, life. But I am very excited to soon join the Department of Environmental Conservation at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst as an Assistant Professor in Conservation Genomics and Ecophysiology!
I will continue working with NOAA-SWFSC and other West Coast collaborators, and can’t wait to get to know New England and develop projects in East Coast rivers and marine ecosystems. Interested students, technicians and post-docs please contact me at lisa.komoroske@noaa.gov.
February 2017 – Dr. Camryn Allen and I led a necropsy workshop at NOAA-SWFSC with a fantastic group of colleagues and volunteers (thanks to Erin and Joel for organizing!). We have had high numbers of sea turtles strand in the past year in southern California, which we never like to see. But they give us an opportunity to learn so much about their biology and what might have caused their deaths. So many thanks to the hard work of all participants! *note: all turtles necropsied were deceased stranded animals; if you see a stranded turtle or marine mammal, do not handle the animal-please call NOAA or the local authorized California stranding network partner*
December 2016 – Excited to be part of the editorial team for this new Research Topic in Frontiers! Please share with anyone who might be interested in contributing, and contact me with any questions!
October 2016 – Our new Functional Ecology paper on climate change and invasive predator-native prey interactions is featured on NPR – Congratulations Brian!
September 2016 – Despite the best efforts of the Monterey Bay fog to keep us grounded, we had some great weather days for California foraging leatherback aerial surveys and boat research (all research and photos conducted under NOAA permit #15634). Always a privilege to work with this amazing research team in the sky and on the water!
September 2016- Up at the gorgeous University of Montana’s Flathead Lake Biological Station for the 2016 Conservation Genomics Workshop. Long but rewarding hours crunching big data and connecting with students, post-docs, and PIs from around the world to learn the many ways they are applying genomics techniques in wildlife conservation. Great opening perspective by Fred Allendorf yesterday, followed by Paul Hohenlohe today sharing his group’s hot off the press Nature paper using genomics to understand disease and recovery in Tasmanian devils.
August 2016- It’s been a fun, busy summer of data analysis & manuscripts. Last week we said goodbye to our amazing Cal Poly STAR interns Sarina Fernandez and Warren Asfazadour who are off to take all the inquiry-based science they learned into high school STEM classrooms! Best of luck!!
We did manage to squeeze in some camping in the Washington Olympic Peninsula and San Juan Islands. Refreshed and ready for Fall to begin!
June 2016- It’s been a good week! Our paper demonstrating how sublethal salinity stress contributes to habitat limitation is out too! 
June 2016- Our paper investigating how high temperatures affect smelt in extreme California drought is featured as an ‘Inside JEB’ article. Congratulations Dr. Jeffries!
Jan. 2016- Our paper combining physiological metrics with climate models is out in PLoSOne! This was a truly collaborative effort with USGS scientists, and I think is a great demonstration of how scientists from different disciplines can synthesize knowledge and help inform management. Check it out:
Dec. 2015-I finally had a chance to write a bit more about the SWFSC loggerhead research, and it’s featured on the NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region News page! Check it out here:
Nov. 2015- Our review paper on bycatch is featured on the Frontiers Journal webpage!
Many thanks to UC Davis for helping us make our work open access to facilitate sharing of scientific ideas and advancing conservation goals!
Oct 2015- California loggerhead & green turtle field work
It’s been a busy last few months sampling green turtles in San Diego Bay
And boat captures and aerial surveys for loggerheads in the Southern California Bight
As I am settling back at my desk and into data analyses, I am humbled by the pretty amazing people who coordinate the many moving pieces of these large projects. I will have more on this research coming soon.
In the meantime, let’s all just reflect on the El Niño visitors this year. In addition to loggerhead food all the way up in Bodega Bay, there’s been whale sharks and a yellow-bellied sea snake in the SCB -the northernmost sea snake ever documented in the Pacific Coast of North America according to Greg Pauly. It’s going to be an interesting ‘winter’…
Sept 2015- New Molecular Ecology paper published!
July 2015- Carrie Bow Cay Field Station
Some of you may be familiar with CBC in Belize for its famous, crazy cool hermit crabs. It also is surrounded by diverse coral, mangrove, seagrass communities that make it a pretty kickass research station.
Now that Brian’s a pro at collecting and spawning the animals, we’re able to make quick work conducting the experiments in the seagrass beds here. Along with some groPro action to monitor the plots and in lab feeding trials to see who’s eating whom, it’s almost like this is a vacation (except for the late night data entry)! Adding in some late night and early morning patrols to monitor the sea turtle nesting activity and exploring the local mangrove communities, this place is pretty dang special.
The facilities and staff here do such an amazing job helping researchers. Wet lab with a sand floor, glassy water with tiller that doesn’t quit, what more could you ask for?
Well, maybe the most perfect outhouse on the planet…
March 2015- If you are in the San Diego area, check out Marine Science Day at SDSU’s marine lab. A great event that is free and has activities geared toward all ages!
February 2015– We are excited to share our article on scientist-K12 STEM collaboration!
January 2015- Brian and I have been working down at the STRI Bocas del Toro field station, getting his first set of experiments off the ground. As a Smithsonian MarineGEO postdoc, he’s using the different Smithsonian marine research stations to understand why we see different patterns of invasive species across latitudes.
As we poked around looking for his study species, we were amazed at the biomass and diversity on the mangrove roots! On the right are a few critters we pulled in to look at more closely in the lab. (visit Brian’s blog to learn more, where he’ll be posting info about his project and some cool video of his adorable bryozoan larvae soon!).
We also had some fun helping scientist Jason Hodin collect urchins for his NSF work with Brian Gaylord and Matt Ferner investigating species differences in how turbulence affects larval settlement -for a taste of this cool work, check out their recent PNAS paper:
Finally, just for kicks-I found this guy in the seagrass beds near the STRI doc-
September 2014-We’ve had unusually warm water off the California Coast this summer. Since temperature is a very important cue for animals, we’ve had some interesting visitors:
Fishermen find rare green sea turtle outside Golden Gate
To learn more, check out the fantastic Natural History of Bodega Head Blog by Jackie Sones- like this post on unusual visitor hitching a ride on some By-the-wind Sailors (Velella velella)!!
August 2014- Check out coverage of our work of climate change impacts on delta smelt in the Delta Science Newsletter!
Molecular Ecology & Conservation 
One thought on “news!”