Mueller Lab Members
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Dr. Casey A. Mueller
Assistant Professor, PI Casey began as an Assistant Professor at CSUSM in Fall 2015. Her research focuses on the fundamental concepts of phenotypic plasticity and critical windows during development. She is fascinated by how physiological systems develop, interact and respond to the environment and how developmental physiology influences animals later in life. Casey is enjoying working with students at CSUSM to answer a broad range of questions in the realm of comparative developmental physiology. You can read about her past research experiences here |
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Christopher Melendez - Graduate Student
Chris has been in the lab since Fall 2015, first as an undergraduate researcher and now as a Masters student. For his senior undergraduate thesis, Chris examined the effects of temperature on brine shrimp development. His Masters research involves using temperature to examine critical windows of embryonic development in rainbow trout. He is managing multiple treatments that examine if increased temperature during gastrulation, organogenesis, system integration or growth influence a range of phenotypic traits of developing rainbow trout. Once he has completed his Masters, Chris hopes to pursue a PhD. |
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Lindsey Korito - Undergraduate Student
Lindsey joined the lab in Fall 2017. Lindsey is majoring in Biology with a concentration in Ecology. She hopes to complete a doctorate degree undertaking research with animals. Some of Lindsey's hobbies include cooking, painting, and being with her animals (including Bruno!). Lindsey is involved in numerous projects in the lab, including working with chorus frog tadpoles to explore plasticity in development in response to water depth and examining the long term impacts of the embryonic environment on tadpole physiology. She presented our chorus frog research on temperature effects on chorus frog development at Experimental Biology 2018 in San Diego. As a 2018 Summer Scholar Lindsey examined the effect of temperature on copepod development across populations. She will expand this work during her senior thesis. |
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Samantha Manzanares - Undergraduate Student
Samantha joined the lab in Fall 2017. Samantha believes research is an important aspect in discovering new concepts in the sciences as well as expanding her own educational experience in a new hands-on approach. Samantha is majoring in General Biology and hopes to pursue medical school to become an OB-GYN. When she is not busy with school, she is at the gym working towards a competition or spending time with her family. Samantha's main project involves working with chorus frog tadpoles, exploring plasticity in development in response to water depth and is examining the long term impacts of the embryonic environment on tadpole physiology. |
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Itzel Espejo - Undergraduate Student
Itzel joined the lab in Fall 2018. Check back soon for updates on what projects she will be working on.
Itzel joined the lab in Fall 2018. Check back soon for updates on what projects she will be working on.
Former Lab Members
Sabrina Kazem - Undergraduate Student
Sabrina was a member of the lab during AY 2017/2018. Sabrina helped with animal maintenance and data collection on our experiment exploring thermal effects on rainbow trout development. Sabrina is completing her final year of her undergraduate studies and hopes to continue her educational path at medical school and make a difference in the world one day.
Janet Solano-Sanchez - Undergraduate Student
Janet joined the lab in Spring 2018 from Palomar Community College. Janet helped with with animal maintenance and data collection on our experiment exploring thermal effects on rainbow trout development. She is now continuing her undergraduate studies at UC Davis!
John Hiedo - Undergraduate Student
John worked on tracking copepod development at various temperatures and helped analyze the lengths of rainbow trout hatchlings reared at different temperatures. John is continuing his undergraduate studies at CSUSM.
Morgan Scheffler - Undergraduate Student
Morgan joined the lab in Fall 2016 during which she conducted a thorough analysis of literature on developmental critical windows and contributed to the analysis of temperature effects on lake whitefish hatchling size. Morgan completed a senior undergraduate thesis in Spring 2017 on marine copepod metabolism using different populations and temperatures. She expanded this work as a Summer Scholar and her resultant manuscript is in review! Morgan graduated in May 2017 and is now busy attending medical school!
Samuel Woldeyohannes - Undergraduate Student
Samuel worked with brine shrimp rearing at different salinities and helped in rainbow trout embryo maintenance at different temperatures, performed dissections and collected mass data. Samuel graduated in May 2018 and is preparing for medical school.
Julie Bucsky - Undergraduate Student
Julie worked on rearing brine shrimp under different temperatures. She also helped with morphological measurements of Baja California chorus frog embryos incubated at different temperatures. Julie graduated in May 2017.
Jonathan Kramer - Undergraduate Student
Jonathan contributed to analysis on the effect of increased temperature during critical windows of development on lake whitefish growth and examining the conditions under which brine shrimp reproduce by live young, eggs, sexual or asexual means.