The University of Florida Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience Evenings at Whitney Lecture Series continues Thursday, January 15, 2026, at 6 p.m. with the program titled “10 Years of Sea Turtles, Tumors and Florida Wildlife Forensics at the UF Whitney Lab”. Dr. David Duffy, Associate Professor of Wildlife Disease Genomics, UF Whitney Laboratory, will be the speaker.
This free lecture will be presented in person at the UF Whitney Laboratory Lohman Auditorium, 9505 Ocean Shore Boulevard, in St. Augustine. Those interested also have the option of registering to watch via Zoom live the night of the lecture.
Register to watch online:
https://ufl.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Seg-UKZ8Quune09LB2AcMg
The University of Florida’s Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience Sea Turtle Hospital opened its doors to patients 10 years ago. Since then, sea turtles have continued to face many threats including habitat loss, pollution, plastic ingestion and a tumor disease known as fibropapillomatosis. This talk will highlight our decade of research efforts to understand and mitigate threats to sea turtle survival. This includes the use of cutting-edge human cancer research approaches to understand the causes of sea turtle tumors, assessing the scale of the plastic ingestion threat, and the development of novel environmental (e)DNA technologies to monitor shifts in the occurrence of sea turtles and their pathogens in the wild.
We have also been utilizing eDNA technologies for biodiversity monitoring, recovering genetic material from thousands of species simultaneously by collecting water, sand or even air samples. These cutting-edge eDNA approaches, pioneered in the Sea Turtle Hospital and Whitney Lab’s rich natural surroundings, with a focus on Florida’s varied animal life (turtles, tortoises, bobcats, spiders, etc.), have had global impact for non-invasive biodiversity and wildlife monitoring, and even human medicine and forensics.
Join us for a talk celebrating a decade of exciting discoveries, successful sea turtle rehabilitation and impactful education!
Dr. David Duffy lab’s primary focus is using genomics approaches to understand wildlife and human health and disease, and the use of environmental DNA (eDNA) for pathogen monitoring and endangered species detection. His lab’s research encompasses the cell and genetic levels up to organism and population levels. In addition to molecular tumor research, they are establishing genomic resources and environmental DNA-based detection approaches for wildlife, humans and viral pathogens. Ultimately, they seek to improve rehabilitation outcomes and inform population level management decisions to mitigate the impact of wildlife diseases on endangered species.