Past Personnel from the Jerry Johnson Laboratory

José Jaime Zúñiga-Vega		Postdoctoral Fellow (2005–06)
	My main research interests are population dynamics and evolution of life histories. Particularly in fishes, amphibians and reptiles. However, I am getting also interested in conservation, phylogeography, and population genetics. The questions that I am currently working on deal with the role of mortality in the evolution of life history strategies, the causes that originated superfetation in poeciliid fishes, and the consequences of temporal and spatial variation in the demographic behavior of natural populations. I was a post doc at Jerry Johnson’s lab during 2005-2006 and now I am getting hired by Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in México City as an Associate Professor. Currently, I am advisor of two undergraduate and two Masters students in México. Along with Dr. Jerry Johnson we are working on identifying conservation units in Mexican livebearing fishes by means of an empirical approach based in demography and population genetics.
Carissa Jones		Masters Student (2005–07)
	I like almost anything living (NOT, however, early morning spiders in the bathtub), but my research has focused on a guppy-like fish native to northern Costa Rica called Xenophallus umbratilis.  My thesis examines how cycles of high and low sea levels associated with glacial and interglacial periods over the last five million years have impacted patterns of genetic diversity within Xenophallus umbratilis.  I graduated from BYU in December 2007.  I have one manuscript from my thesis that is currently in review titled “Phylogeography of the livebearer Xenophallus umbratilis (Teleostei: Poeciliidae): glacial cycles and sea level change predict diversification of a freshwater tropical fish”.  I am also working on a second manuscript exploring life history variation in X. umbratilis.

Papers generated in the Johnson Lab:

• “Demography of Xenosaurus platyceps (Squamata: Xenosauridae): a comparison between tropical and temperate populations”, Amphibia-Reptilia 29: 245-256, 2008.

  Authors: R. Isaac Rojas-González, Carissa P. Jones, J. Jaime Zúñiga-Vega, Julio A. Lemos-Espinal