Intergenerational Effects of Parental Exposure to Ocean Acidification on Crassostrea virginica Larvae

The Shout-It-Out Award (Conference Travel Award)

Blog Post by Ffion Titmuss COS ’21

I had a fantastic experience at Evolution 2019, both during my poster session and during the conference as a whole. A number of people were really excited about the work I was presenting, and I was able to talk to various other researchers studying similar topics to mine in different systems, which was great! In addition, one of the most useful pieces of feedback I received consisted of some suggestions for ways to enhance our model, which will definitely be something to play around with as we finish analyzing our data.

Of the other talks and posters I observed, I found that I was particularly interested in those focusing on aspects of biogeography/phylogeography (such as intriguing patterns of variation and speciation) and population genetics, as well as one amazing talk exploring the relationship between functional integration and morphological evolution in the context of seabirds’ and shorebirds’ biomechanics! Having an opportunity to hear about so many distinct research inquiries helped me to establish some areas that particularly interest me, which made my time at the conference especially valuable.

At Evolution, the experience of listening to so many other scientists discuss their work, seeing their passion for so many different topics and aspects of their science, and being able to share in their enthusiasm made me really excited about the prospect of doing more work on more projects in the future! Prior to joining my current lab, I had never considered applying to graduate school for science, and my experience at Evolution has now given me yet another (significant) push, in addition to my time in the lab itself, toward aiming for a career involving scientific research.