Department of Biology

Renn Lab

Student Project Ideas

(check back often as new ideas will be added)

These pages include scientific ideas that supplement my own research interests. I provide a short summary and a few references but students are encouraged to propose independent ideas.

  1. Genetic Basis for Maternal Behavior in A. burtoni * (several projects)
  2. Natural vs. Environmental Sex-Role Reversal among Julidochromis species * (several projects)
  3. Identification of Rapidly Evolving Cichlid Genes with hCGH *
  4. Proof of Principle for hCGH using Drosophila melanogaster (related to project 3)
  5. Sex Determination in African Cichlids
  6. Data Imputation with cDNA Microarray Data
  7. Assortitive Mating by Cichlid Populations
  8. Blue fish / Yellow fish
  9. Bioinformatics (several projects available)
  10. Genomic Resources for Cichlids - complete 2006 Robby Kunkle

(* indicates ongoing projects that are a main focus in our research)

 

Student Project Idea 8

Blue Fish / Yellow Fish

Territorial males of the species Astatotilapia burtoni come in either a yellow or a blue morph. Territorial males have been reported to change from the yellow to the blue morph during a single tenure of territoriality. The prevalence and rate of change have not been rigorously recorded. Furthermore, little attention has been paid to behavioral differences between these morphs. A recent report suggests that territorial male color predicts agonistic behavior of the challenging male. More research is needed in this area.

 

References

Aspects of the Project:

Tagging individual males and recording color and behavior