Katie E. McGhee

Florida State University

Department of Biological Science

Ecology and Evolution (area 3)

Tallahassee, Florida

Major Professor: Joseph Travis

My research interests

My Master's degree 

I just started in the Travis lab this fall (2003) and am still trying to figure out what exactly I want to work on. In general, I am interested in the evolution of mating systems and how population density affects the strength of sexual selection.

My Master's degree work under Don Levitan (FSU)

While at the Bamfield Marine Station (Bamfield, B.C., Canada) as Don's research assistant, I completed an independent project investigating allorecognition in sponge larvae.  Allorecognition is the ability to distinguish between genetically similar and genetically distinct tissue. In sedentary marine invertebrates, where encounters may occur frequently as individuals grow along the substrate, an allorecognition system is thought to reduce tissue fusion with unrelated individuals. 

I used the common encrusting purple sponge, Haliclona sp., which is located in the intertidal along the west coast of Canada, to address the stage-specific differences in the allorecognition response. While adults of the purple sponge fuse preferentially with related tissue; its free-swimming larvae fuse equally with sibling and non-sibling larvae and form swimming chimeras capable of successful metamorphosis. In addition, larvae modify their swimming behavior to increase their encounter rate of other larvae suggesting benefits for those larvae that pursue fusion. However some adult sponges produce larvae that are overall more fusible than those produced by others, suggesting that larval fusion frequencies are also affected by different parental strategies. These results suggest that the costs and benefits of fusion and a functioning allorecognition system may shift during an organism’s life cycle.