Experiential
Learning

For my first experiential learning project, I presented at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB)'s 2023 conference in Austin, TX. My co-presenter (Jules Padro) and I presented on our research from a summer REU program at the American Museum of Natural History, where we tested for an evolutionary trend called Rensch's rule in the mandibles of civets and genets. Rensch's rule is a trend where the degree of sexual dimorphism increases with increasing body size, and we 3D scanned mandibles from the museum's collections, using geometric morphometrics and R to analyze the data. I learned a lot about coding in R through the REU. Additionally, attending the 2023 SICB conference let me explore my interests for future research projects, including by attending talks on evolutionary morphology, disease and conservation, and more.