Laura Alberici da Barbiano

                                 Ph.D. Student in Aquatic Resources                               CV

                 Department of Biology, Texas State University - San Marcos

                                    Laura_Alberici@txstate.edu 

                        Advisors: Dr. Caitlin Gabor  and  Dr. Chris Nice

Who Am I

I was born in Italy in 1981 and lived there until I moved to Ethiopia when I was 16. Needless to say: that was an amazing experience. I had an opportunity to travel all over East Africa, I went on Safaris and spent hours watching really cool animals doing amazing things. Not surprisingly, those 3 years in Africa triggered my already curious mind; but it was not until I saw a leopard hiding behind a bush to check its lunch's (gazelle) movements, that I realized that I wanted to become an evolutionary/behavioral biologist.

So I came to the US to study at UT - Austin....where after many parties, sleepless nights and spending innumerable hours watching zebrafish swimming back and forth, I graduated in December 2004.

I took a year and a half off (not really voluntarily) and now I am here, back in Texas,  but most importantly...doing research again.

The Fishes

P. latipinna male

  P. latipinna female

P. formosa

Research

My main interest at the moment is to investigate the maintenance of unisexual-bisexual mating systems.

The Amazon molly, Poecilia formosa, is a gynogenetic fish that arose from an hybridization event between a female shortfin molly, P. mexicana, and a male sailfin molly, P. latipinna about 100,000 years ago (Hubbs & Hubbs 1932; Avise et al. 1991).  

Poecilia formosa is therefore a species that consists of only females and depends on the sperm of the parental species to start embryogenesis. As a result, it has to live in sympatry with either parental species and depends on them for its persistence.

At the same time, male P. latipinna and P. mexicana should avoid mating with gynogens because they obtain no obvious direct or indirect fitness from such matings. Although many studies have been performed it is still not clear what mechanisms may be influencing the males' mate choice when both conspecific and gynogenetic heterospecific females are present in a population.

I am currently testing a few hypotheses by performing experiments in a semi-natural environment rather than in a laboratory setting to be able to assess how population dynamics may affect male mate choice.