Graduate Students: All of my graduate students have recently completed their MS degrees. Contact me if you are interested in joining the Reyns lab. Note, USD only admits students in the fall semesters.                                                                                                   

Undergraduate Students:

Sofia Ramirez

Hello! My name is Sofia Ramirez, I’m a rising senior at USD majoring in marine ecology, with a minor in biology! This past summer, I conducted research with Dr. Reyns through the McNair program. Our study was called ‘The effects of anthropogenic noise on hermit crab (Pagurus samuelis) shell-selection behaviors’. We used recordings of low-frequency sound from large vessel noise to understand how the shell-selection behaviors of blueband hermit crabs might differ upon exposure.

Miguel “Miggy” Cheng

Hi everyone and my name is Miguel Cheng. My focus is on barnacles, which play a critical ecological role in intertidal habitats. But while their complex life cycles are known to affect population dynamics and conservation planning, their larval microbiomes remain uncharacterized. This project investigates the microbial communities associated with barnacle larval development off Bird Rock, San Diego. Using field sampling of nauplii and cyprids alongside 16S rDNA amplicon sequencing, we map how these microbiomes change across developmental stages to better understand the role bacteria play in driving larval metamorphosis and survival.