Animal Biodiversity

Welcome! The Govindarajan lab studies the biodiversity and ecology of marine animals, especially the animals of the ocean's midwater. Towards that end, we use environmental DNA approaches to address questions related to diel vertical migration, food web interactions, and the biological carbon pump. Given the vast size of the ecosystem and the logistical challenges for studying deep water habitats, we develop and apply autonomous sampling approaches which we use in conjunction with a range of deep sea exploration platforms.

Specific research topics include:

• Assessing mesopelagic fish and zooplankton distributions, particularly related to the phenomenon of diel vertical migration, and how these patterns relate to functional roles in food webs and the global carbon cycle

• Development and application of autonomous eDNA samplers with in situ filtration coupled with AUV, ROV, and towed platforms; including the development and application of autonomous adaptive sampling

• Creating genetic reference databases for DNA barcoding and metabarcoding of mesopelagic fishes

• Molecular systematics, phylogenetics, ecology and evolution of jellyfishes