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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 Ph: 216.397.4492 E-mail: rsaporito@jcu.edu |
Graduate Students
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Emily Staufer |
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Katie Waters |
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Emily graduated with a B.A. in Biology and minor in Environmental Studies from Lake Forest College in 2019. She will begin the M.S. program at John Carroll University in Fall 2020, and plans to study maternal provisioning of alkaloid-based defenses in dendrobatid poison frogs of the genus Oophaga.
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Katie graduated with a B.S. in Biology from John Carroll University in 2019. She began the M.S. program at John Carroll University in Fall 2019. Katie is studying differences in alkaloid defense sequestration — uptake efficiency and chemical modification of alkaloids — within and among species of poison frogs. In particular, she is comparing alkaloid sequestration among different lineages of poison frogs, as well as examine differences in sequestration among populations of dendrobatid poison frogs in Costa Rica.
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Undergraduate Students
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Kathryn Bacik |
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Nina Savastano |
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Kathryn is a junior Biology major at JCU. She joined the lab in Fall 2019 and is conducting research on maternal provisioning of alkaloid defenses in the strawberry poison frog Oophaga pumilio from Costa Rica.
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Nina is a junior Environmental Science major at JCU. She joined the lab in Fall 2019 and is working on multiple projects. She is researching anti predator behavior in the yellow-striped poison frog, Dendrobates truncatus, and maternal provisioning of alkaloid defenses in the granulated poison frog Oophaga granulifera. She was also awarded a 2019 Summer Undergraduate Fellowship (SURF) from JCU and is studying the distribution of alkaloid defenses in the skin of the green and black poison frog Dendrobates auratus from Costa Rica.
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Visiting Students
Adriana Jeckel |
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Adriana is a Ph.D. candidate from the Graduate Program in Zoology of University of São Paulo, Brazil and her research focuses mainly on chemical defense of poison frogs and its ecological and evolutionary implications. Currently, her Ph.D. research aims to understand some of the mechanisms that allow poison frogs to sequester alkaloids.
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