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My Story

I grew the desire to go on adventures and discover new things in the last years of the undergraduate. Thereby in 2010, I went to the south of Iran, where there were mangrove forests and Coral reef Islands, and I started to learn scuba diving. The underwater world was such a relaxing experience I had never had in my life. Indeed, my heart rate increased by seeing such a beautiful world in the depth of water. This memorable experience and the underwater expedition was for my bachelor dissertation, which was on clownfish and coexistence with the coral reef. In 2011, I was also offered an internship at the Institute of Keyvan, where I worked at sturgeon, salmon, carp breeding, and culture. I gain extra valuable experience in such precious fishes. I worked on Aphaniuos Isfahanensis population diversity, which varies due to climate change, habitat fragmentation, and human manipulation. My thesis is divided into two sections: Morphometrically and Genetically approaches. The morphometric studies conducted before my work were predominantly carried manual measurement. In my research, I used technology advanced in geometry and photography; I changed the approach to determine morphological differences among the population using the latest statistical software. In the genetic differences section, I used a biotechnology approach such as SNPs and Microsatellite to identify differences among the population of such species and compared two parts of my research to reach a firm conclusion. During my study in the genetic lab, I shared my experiences of using geometry software such as TPS SERIES, MORPHOJ, PAST, and genetic approaches such as DNA extraction, Running PCR, Molecular Markers such as SNPs and Microsatellite, Electrophoresis, and so forth with undergraduate and graduate students in a different number of genetic courses in the fisheries.

My answer to the question of why I would like to study Coservation Biology  goes back to the time when I had been sampling Aphanius in the Isfahan basin for my master’s dissertation; I saw a significant decrease in population in the same habitat an over the successive years this population decline attracted my attention. These changes could be due to external factors such as climate change, habitat fragmentation, pollution, and invasive species like Guppy and Molly. Also, it might depend on internal factors such as behavior and genetic of species. Then many unanswered questions went through my mind.

What could be the reason for the decrease in persistence tolerance to Stressors?

-What diagnostic tools can help maintain a healthy population?

-Can stress hormones such as Cortisol, CORT respond to stressor be an excellent indicator for

diagnosing the problem?

-How do I relate this external and internal indicator to reach a convincing answer?

-How can the population decline be attributed to such factors?

On a final account, to answer such questions, I need to learn the most up-to-date techniques in genomics, physiology, animal behavior, and statistical methodologies to understand such species’ evolutionary history better. Currently, I am working on Maternal stress Effect during Gestation on offspring by using live-bearing fish as model system, we examine effect of stress and pollutant on  behavior and Cognition of species, I am workin as graduate student in  Gasp Lab,  Being able to pursue my education at the Department of Biology, Texas State University would surely be an invaluable experience in my academic life.