Open Ocean Ecology: Shaping the Life History Evolution in Long-lived Animals

Guest Presenter: Roxanne Beltran
UCSC Researcher

In this presentation, Roxanne will discuss how her elephant seal research has shown that annual cycle timing, ocean conditions, and behavioral strategies have critical consequences for survival and reproductive success in large marine vertebrates.

Roxanne Beltran is interested in understanding how animal behavior and physiology underlie the ecological and evolutionary patterns we see in nature. Her research group uses bio-loggers and mark-recapture to inform interdisciplinary theory, including navigation cues, predator-prey landscapes, cryptic species distributions, and marine ecosystem resource pulses, using elephant seals as a model system. Roxanne is a Packard Fellow in Science and Engineering, a Beckman Young Investigator, and author of the children’s book, “A Seal Named Patches”. She is passionate about inclusion of marginalized communities in research, and co-founded Building a Better Fieldwork Future program which is working to make field settings safer and more equitable for young field scientists.