Alexis Garretson is a Doctoral Candidate at the Tufts University and The Jackson Laboratory joint program in Mammalian Genetics and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. Her Ph.D. research in the Dumont Lab focuses on using genetically diverse mouse strains to investigate the genetic causes and evolutionary consequences of mutation rate variation in populations, particularly as it relates to reproduction and fitness. She previously completed a M.S. degree in Evolutionary Biology at George Mason University with Dr. Rebecca Forkner using citizen science data and herbarium specimens to investigate the impacts of climate change on the fall color change in the Northeast US.
She advocates for open data as an Open Biodiversity Data Ambassador with the Global Biodiversity Information Facilities and as a data specialist with Anecdata.org. Alexis is also involved in bioinformatics and data science education as an instructor with The Carpentries and through developing university data science curricula.
Check out my observations and identifications on
iNaturalist
PhD Genetics, Mammalian Genetics, in progress
Tufts University & Jackson Laboratory
MS Biology, Evolutionary Biology, 2020
George Mason University
BS Biology, Environmental and Conservation Biology, 2018
George Mason University
We find significant changes in the timing fall color change using herbarium specimens
We discuss the potential roles of hybridization in terms of generating asexuality and novel morphological traits in lichens. Our results highlight the need for additional study of reticulate phylogenies when investigating species boundaries and evolutionary history, even in cases with well-supported topologies inferred from genome-scale data.