Introducing Dr. Heather Arnett!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I introduce to you Dr. Heather Arnett!  Heather nicely defended her PhD dissertation on “Sources of Ecologically Important Trait Variation in Mosquitofish“, which included some very nice chapters on parallel and unique patterns of intra-generational and transgenerational phenotypic plasticity.  The breeding and rearing designs to pull off her experiments were huge and that work is made all the more impressive by a comparative framework contrasting species, sexes and different types of traits.  Fortunately, Heather had a small but dedicated army of helpers and lab-mates for logistical and moral support, and it was great to see them all today in the audience.  Heather even got two lucky opportunities to demonstrate her ability to maintain her cool under the severe duress of not one, but two catastrophic and improbable failures of the video conferencing systems.  Seriously…what are the odds of simultaneously losing audio, but not video, for two different committee members connected from two different continents via two different conferencing systems (Skype and Jabber) running on two different computers? But Heather could not be deterred, even when her remote committee members were communicating with pop-up signs like Wild-E-Coyote in an old Roadrunner cartoon (click for artist’s representation).  We’re proud of you, Heather!  Nice Job!