Kim Tice
Department of Zoology,
University of Hawai`i
2538 McCarthy Mall,
Edmondson 152
Honolulu, HI 96822
katice@hawaii.edu

Research Interests:
I was born and raised in Hawaii, but on a whim moved across the country to Maine after high school and received my B.A. from Bowdoin College. My interests in ecology and ornithology were sparked during my undergraduate years, and led to my senior thesis examining post-fledging parental care in Savannah Sparrows. Since graduating, I have studied raptor migration in the Goshute Mountains of Nevada, the dispersal patterns of Burrowing Owls on the Carrizo Plain in California, the basic ecology of the Long-wattled Umbrellabird in the Choco rainforest of northwestern Ecuador, and the population demographics and impacts of long-line fisheries on the Waved Albatross in the Galapagos Islands.

I entered the Master's program at the University of Hawaii in the fall of 2005 as a member of Dr. David Carlon's lab, intending to enter new fields of biological research, namely marine biology and molecular ecology. I am currently using an amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLP) genome scan and geometric morphometric techniques to study the maintenance of a shell polymorphism in the Hawaiian periwinkle Echinolittorina hawaiiensis.

Echinolittorina hawaiiensis provides an excellent opportunity to apply a genomic approach to understand the role of selection in maintaining polymorphisms. First, gradients in thermal stress, wave action and biological interactions can be notoriously steep on rocky shores, creating heterogeneous environments over short distances. Further, many intertidal snail species demonstrate striking intraspecific polymorphisms in shell form across environmental gradients. In E. hawaiiensis, a larger, sculptured form lives high in the intertidal in dry areas exposed to spray, but no direct swash, while a smaller, smooth form predominates in the lower intertidal where it is exposed to wetter conditions. Several lines of evidence suggest that, despite an extended larval period of three to four weeks, this shell polymorphism is maintained by divergent natural selection in contrasting intertidal habitats.

Nevertheless, some malacologists are skeptical of this conclusion. Specifically, correlations between shell morphology and microhabitat in planktotrophic species have traditionally been interpreted as the result of phenotypic plasticity, despite the fact that a strong genetic component exists in nonplanktotrophic species. I am using a genomic approach to study E. hawaiiensis in contrasting intertidal habitats for three reasons: 1) it will further our understanding of the evolution of balanced polymorphisms across the genome as a result of spatially variable selection in broadly dispersing species; 2) combined genomic and phenotypic data will provide information about the relative genetic and phenotypic control of shell sculpture in this species, providing resolution of a long-standing malacological debate; and 3) the whole-genome approach will provide valuable information about the genetic signature of selection unobtainable from previous studies that examined only a few loci.