Undergraduate Researcher
Contact Information:
Phone: (314) 977-3935
Fax: (314) 977-3658
E-mail: caldiejb@slu.edu
Mail: Department of Biology
St. Louis University
3507 Laclede Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63103-2010
B.A., Saint Louis University, exp. 2004
Research Interests: My work is focused on the imperiled blue shiner of the Coosa River drainage in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. I am sequencing two mitochondrial genes (ND2 and ND4) to determine if any population structure exists between the four existing populations. This work is vital because these fish are currently threatened with introgressive hybridization with the introduced red shiner (a bait bucket minnow from the Ozarks), and we need baseline data to monitor this situation. Currently, we have not found any red shiner haplotypes in approximately 40 blue shiners sequenced, but we have found one mitochondrial haplotype of a tricolor shiner, another Mobile Basin endemic.
Fish illustrations by Joseph R. Tomelleri and used with permission.