Jake Stercula

I am a senior undergraduate, majoring in Neuroscience at Trinity University. I am interested in understanding how physiological mechanisms influence variations in behavior within and across species of Anolis lizards.

I have been fortunate to develop a collaborative research project in Dr. Michele Johnson's lab that includes collaborators in the Biology, Neuroscience, and Physics departments at Trinity University. I am also working with scientists at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and Kansas State University Lipidomics Facility.

This project has taken a little more than 2.5 years to establish. I spent a summer in Puerto Rico collecting data for a project funded by the National Science Foundation and used the opportunity to collect body temperatures and brain tissue from native anole species. Last summer, I followed this natural study with a lab experiment directly manipulating the environmental temperature of local Texas green anoles and collected brain samples. The time in between has been used to figure out how to prep samples for mass spectroscopy and grow primary lizard brain cells to quantify membrane fluidity.

I am looking forward to continuing my research next year at Trinity where I will advance this project and gain more valuable research experience.

March 2016