Dorota Porazinska
University of Florida, FL·Ecology & Evolution
Nematodes, tiny roundworms usually too small to see, are the most diverse and abundant animals in the Nebraska Sandhills. The Sandhills are one of the world's largest intact temperate grasslands: grass-covered sand dunes sitting above the Ogallala Aquifer.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Biology
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
nematodes
taxonomy
species discovery
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Describe new species of freshwater nematodes in the families Tobrilidae, Plectidae and Monhysteridae from Nebraska Sandhills aquatic habitats, using body-shape (morphological) analysis and DNA barcoding of individual specimens.
- Map where these nematodes occur across alkaline lakes, fens, wet meadows and streams in three Sandhills regions, using 128 samples analyzed by community metabarcoding and mitochondrial metagenomics.
- Place the new species in evolutionary and ecological context through phylogenetic analysis, species delimitation, phylogenetic endemism, regression models and co-occurrence networks linked to water chemistry.
More about the research
Nematodes live there in habitats ranging from clean groundwater-fed streams to alkaline lakes whose water chemistry excludes most other life. How they survive these extremes is unknown. Because climate change and groundwater depletion are reshaping the region, the Sandhills act as a natural experiment. They offer a way to study what drives nematode diversity and adaptation, and how these animals respond to a changing environment.
Why it matters
Nematodes are abundant in freshwater ecosystems, but most Sandhills species remain undescribed. Naming new species and mapping where they live across a grassland stressed by climate change and aquifer depletion will show how these animals adapt to extreme water chemistry. The work could also reveal how freshwater life responds to environmental shifts. The resulting taxonomic and ecological baseline could inform future monitoring of these habitats.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Gustavo Hormiga
George Washington University, DC·Ecology & Evolution
Discover and formally describe new Neotropical velvet worm species in the family Peripatidae, combining high-throughput sequence data with modern morphological techniques to estimate the region's true species diversity.
Joanna Cielocha
Rockhurst University, MO·Ecology & Evolution
Collect grasshoppers and the gregarine parasites inside them on six expeditions to sites in the Western United States, a region where no insect gregarines have been sampled before.
Olaf Jensen
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether fish in Lake Hovsgol and the Eg River use behavioral thermoregulation, moving to cooler microhabitats, to cope with warming, using electronic tags and temperature-logging sensors.
The school
University of Florida: 65 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 795 research doctorates a year.
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