Marissa LaMartina, a sophomore majoring in biological sciences, has been awarded the Outstanding Discovery Fellow award. The award honors excellence in the Discovery Fellow program, a research-focused program for high-achieving Honors College students.
LaMartina carries out research in the Chipojo lab in the Division of Biological Sciences. She is working closely with graduate student Christian Perez on a comparative neuroanatomy project that aims to understand the relationship between habitat selection and the evolution of sensory systems in lizards. Her specific project focuses on the vomeronasal system, which is a part of chemoreception in reptiles. Located in the roof of the mouth, the organ is used to detect volatile and nonvolatile chemicals.
LaMartina is using microCT scans and iodine-based contrast-enhanced computed tomography (diceCT) to characterize this organ in eight lizard species that occupy different environmental niches. Her goal is to test the “trade-off hypothesis,” which posits that visually-oriented species have relatively poor chemoreception and vice versa; in other words, does a lizard with a large visual system exhibit a relatively small chemoreception system?
LaMartina also was selected as a Cherng Summer Scholar for 2022. This funding will allow her to carry out her research over the summer. Her summer plans includes expanding her comparative neuroanatomy work to include the optic nerves as well as collecting ecological, behavioral, and morphological observations of the species in their natural habitats in Puerto Rico.