Current Projects
Past Projects
Jumping PerformanceDr. Roberts wondered if the most powerful jumpers have the most powerful muscles, much like how a Lamborghini has the most powerful car engine. Consequently, I collected data from three types of frogs of varying jumping abilities. I used force plates and custom software code to measure jumping power outputs. We also executed in vitro muscle preparations, to characterize muscle power. We found that there was no significant difference in muscle power outputs. Therefore, we concluded that it was non-muscular mechanisms that determined jumping ability in frogs. Specifically, it was the ability of the excellent jumpers to utilize elastic energy storage to exceed the capacity of their muscles, essentially acting like slingshots
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Calaveras County Jumping Frog JubileeWe continued our investigation of anuran jumping performance at the Calaveras Jumping Frog Jubilee, a frog jumping competition with hundreds of frog contestants. The Jumping Jubilee was in it’s 80th year of competition after it had been inspired by Mark Twain’s short story. It was like the Olympics, but for bullfrogs. People from around the county gathered up bullfrogs and jumped them in an arena. We recorded thousands of bull frog jumps on video and discovered that in the lab frogs do not generally reach their maximal jump distance because laboratory research rarely uses the sample size needed to characterize maximal performance for a species.
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Undergraduate Research
Jellyfish form and function
As an undergraduate researcher I assisted Dr. John H. Costello at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and Friday Harbor Laboratory (FHL). There, we investigated how the morphology of the jellyfish Obelia geniculata corresponds to its eating behavior using high-speed videography.
[email protected]
Azizi Lab
(949) 824-7258
University of California, Irvine
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
321 Steinhaus Hall, Irvine, CA 92697
Azizi Lab
(949) 824-7258
University of California, Irvine
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
321 Steinhaus Hall, Irvine, CA 92697