Lili Vizer Receives 2022 Economakis Award

Lili Vizer of the Buston Lab received the 2022 Alistair Economakis Award in Marine Science. This award provides support for graduate students conducting research in marine science with a focus on research related to ecology, evolution, or behavior.

Lili is interested in the evolutionary processes that can help us to link genotype, phenotype, and plasticity in the marine environment. She is particularly interested in how body size can be an adaptive plastic response to fine-scale social changes which is referred to as strategic growth. Her current research goal is to elucidate the genetic underpinnings of strategic growth in clownfish. This summer she will be conducting experiments in the Buston lab, where juvenile clownfish are grown and exposed to different social contexts to better understand how the phenotypic growth response can be linked with changes on the transcriptomic level. Her study is the first that investigates the genetics of strategic growth of any social vertebrates. Thus, results will be invaluable to gaining a thorough understanding of the genetic underpinnings of the social hierarchy of clownfish as well as any other social vertebrates.

Congratulations, Lili!