Andres Marquez receives NSF fellowship

First-year PhD student Andres Marquez has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship to explore how temperature and oxygen affect the body size of marine invertebrates.

His project is titled “From Mass Extinctions to Modern Global Climate Change: Predicting Effects of Temperature and Deoxygenation on Marine Invertebrate Body Size.” The five-year fellowship provides three years of financial support, an annual stipend, and an education allowance to the institution.

Marquez works with assistant professor Erik Sperling in the Historical Geobiology Research Group. His research aims to better understand how the interaction between oxygen and temperature – known as temperature-dependent hypoxia – can explain body size changes observed in the fossil record before and after mass extinctions. He will assess the impacts of temperature and oxygen supply on the physiology of marine invertebrates, which include non-fishery species as well as economically important shellfish like abalone, oysters, and scallops.

“Our work can help identify which groups of marine invertebrates are most likely to decrease in body size in response to ocean warming and deoxygenation associated with modern global climate change,” Marquez said.

Marquez will carry out experiments to estimate metabolism rates at Stanford in conjunction with field work from San Juan Island in Washington, Bocas del Toro in Panama, and Heron Island in Australia. His proposal also includes mentoring and training undergraduate students to conduct lab work during the academic year and summer through programs like the Summer Undergraduate Research in Geoscience and Engineering (SURGE).