Research technician
Soy licenciada en geografía e historia de la Universidad de Panamá. Como técnica de investigación he tenido la oportunidad de trabajar en diferentes proyectos identificando organismos de la fauna arrecifal como: Bryozoas, corales, bivalvos y gasterópodos. Actualmente, en colaboración con el Dr. Orangel Aguilera (Universidad Federal Fluminense, Brasil), trabajo en un proyecto que busca describir las comunidades de peces arrecifales antes de las perturbaciones (p.ej. milenios de sobrepesca) causada por los seres humanos. Para ello identifico otolitos, estructuras calcáreas alojadas en el oído interno, de peces teleósteos marinos colectados en muestras fósiles (Holoceno, ~7000 años) y modernas del Caribe. Los datos que se obtendrán serán muy importantes en la gestión de los recursos pesqueros en el Caribe de Panamá principalmente, así como para funcionarios tomadores de decisiones y conservacionistas.
I’m a Biology undergraduate student at University of Panama profoundly interested in Marine Biology and paleontology, especially the evolution, adaptation and ecology of coral reefs. I’m working on a project that consists of reconstructing the Caribbean reef fish communities of the past, and my master tools for this research are fish otoliths. Otoliths have distinct shapes that enable us to identify fish families, sometimes even to the level of species and fossil otoliths may help us reconstruct the reef fish community of the Caribbean 7000 years ago (i.e. before human impacts). This information will provide a baseline that will enable us to compare “pristine” with modern reef fish communities.
I am a student at Keiser University in Nicaragua who will be transferring to FIU this year to pursue a degree in Marine Biology. I am working alongside Erin Dillon helping process fossil and modern sediment samples to find shark denticles and formulate a hypothesis of how shark communities were before humans. This will allow me to explore new areas of marine biology and gain experience doing research. It will also help me understand how fossils can be used to interpret the present.
scientists began to survey reefs. Focusing on Bocas del Toro, Panama, this project aims to quantify the differences in the ecological structure of reef-building corals from a 7000 year old fossil reef versus a modern reefs. The fossil reef and modern reefs respectively developed before and during the period when human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Understanding how reef-building corals have changed over historical timescales can help marine managers to assess the decline of Caribbean reefs relative to their condition before the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.
ackground to conduct innovative research and integrate macroecology and palaeoecology. Thus, my current research focuses on integrating new and existing geochemical data with paleobiological data from the Panama Paleontology Project (PPP) to resolve the drivers of ecological change and evolutionary turnover in the Caribbean. In collaboration with Dr. Ethan Grossman (Texas A&M) I have built a relational database ‘Tropical Ocean Database’ that will be available to unite paleoecology, evolutionay, environmental and geochemical datasets to allow broad-scale comparison and analysis of marine ecosystems and their communities through time.
Follow the exploits of the O’Dea lab in the field on the 
Three years ago Paul Taylor was inPanama scouting for Pleistocene bryozoans along the Burica Peninsula that juts out into the Pacific Ocean at the Panamanian and Costa Rican border. Neil MacGregor had just published the book “A History of the World in 100 objects” and I mentioned 
O'Dea Lab 
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