Welcome to my website--I am very excited that you are here! My hope for this webpage is that it can give you a snapshot of who I am as a person, scientist, and mentor. Please poke around and feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Cheers,
Michelle St. John
I am a 5th year PhD candidate in the Integrative Biology department at the University of California Berkeley (graduating summer 2022). I am broadly interested in the origins of evolutionary novelty and study this using behavioral, genetic, and kinematic data
(learn more below!).
I currently live with my husband, two cats (Tulip and Alfalfa), and a hairless dog (Tomatillo). I am originally from the midwest and received my bachelor's and master's degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I started my PhD experience at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, but moved with my lab to Berkeley in my third year. In my free time I like to cook, stream netflix with my pets, and hike around CA with my partner.
I am interested in understanding how new traits, behaviors, or new combinations of traits and behaviors allow organisms to occupy new ecological niche, and I study this phenomena using the pupfish system. Pupfish (Cyprinodon variegatus) are found across the Atlantic coasts of North and South America where they mostly consume a generalist diet. However, in the Bahamas we find an endemic radiation of pupfish that contains both a snail-eating (C. brontotheroides) and a scale-eating specialist (C. desquamator). Both species exhibit novel morphologies, behaviors, and ecologies--Making them an excellent study system! Check out my specific PhD chapters below to see how I am piecing together how these fantastic fish occupy these rare ecological niches.
Below are summaries of my recent research projects. For my PhD, I have been investigating the origins of novelty using the pupfish system. During my master's work I focused on investigating the process of reinforcement and the formation of reproductive isolation in killifish.
If you are interested in contacting me please email me at: stjohn3@berkeley.edu
