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Ralph A. Saporito, Ph.D.
Associate Professor Graduate Program Director Department of Biology John Carroll University Office: Dolan W211 Lab: Dolan W108 & W110 Frog Room: W219-B Ph: 216.397.4492 E-mail: rsaporito@jcu.edu |
Graduate Students
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Katherine Porras-Brenes |
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Katherine graduated with a B.S. in Tropical Biology and Natural Resources Management from the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica in 2021. She began the M.S. program at John Carroll University in Fall 2022, and is interested in studying chemical defenses, color, and behavior in dendrobatid poison frogs in Costa Rica.
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Undergraduate Students
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Ella Church |
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Vilma Dudaitis |
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Ella is a senior Environmental Science major at JCU, and she joined the lab in Fall 2021. She has studied N-methylation of piperidine alkaloids in poison frogs of the genus Ranitomeya, and is currently working on a project to describe alkaloids in oribatid mites from northeast Ohio.
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Vilma is a junior Biology major at JCU, and she joined the lab in Spring 2022. She was awarded a 2022 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) from JCU, and is currently describing alkaloid variation in 6 different species of myobatrachid poison frogs (Pseudophryne) from Australia.
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Emily SlusarzEmily is a junior Biology major at JCU and joined the lab in Fall 2021. She is currently working with her lab-mate Mia Zivkovic on an experiment aimed at better understanding sequestration of tricyclic alkaloids in poison frogs of the genus Ranitomeya. Emily is also in charge of caring for the live poison frog colony in the Saporito Lab.
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Annabel McQuillanAnnabel is a senior Biology major at JCU and joined the lab in Spring 2022. She is currently working on a project to identify and characterize poison frog alkaloids in ants and mites from Costa Rica.
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Mia Zivkovic |
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Mia is a junior Biology major at JCU and joined the lab in Fall 2021. She is currently working with her lab-mate Emily Slusarz on an experiment aimed at better understanding sequestration of tricyclic alkaloids in poison frogs of the genus Ranitomeya.
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Visiting Researchers
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Dr. Adriana Jeckel |
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Julia Pinna |
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Dr. Adriana Jeckel recently graduated from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, where her research focused mainly on chemical defenses in poison frogs and their ecological and evolutionary implications. More specifically, much of her research aims to understand some of the mechanisms that allow poison frogs to sequester alkaloids. She is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Switzerland.
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Julia is an undergraduate student visiting from the University of São Paulo, Brazil in Fall 2022. During her visit, she will be learning how to extract, analyze, and characterize alkaloid defenses in several South American species of dendrobatid poison frogs.
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