The Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience
Dr. Li has joined the Liao Lab as a Research Scholar for three months, funded by the European project 'iNavigate'. During his stay, he is interested in conducting experiments with flow visualizations of fish swimming, collecting schooling fish data, experimenting with schooling robots, and more. Read More
Congratulations to Brendan Gibbs, Ph.D. Otar Akanyeti, Ph.D. (previous Liao Lab Post Doc), and Dr. James Liao who published a paper titled "Kinematics and muscle activity of pectoral fins in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) station holding in turbulent flow" in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Read More
On March 1st, Brendan Gibbs, a graduate student advised by James Liao, Professor of Biology, successfully defended his Ph.D. entitled “From the field to the neuron: an integrative approach to understanding natural animal behavior”. Read More
The 10-step “guideline”, entertainingly written and published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, encourages researchers to (re-)engage with their animals’ ecology and lifestyle. Read More
Congratulations to Whitney researchers Dr. Elias Lunsford, Dr. Yuriy Bobkov, Brandon Ray, Dr. James Liao and Dr. James Strother who published a paper titled "Anion efflux mediates transduction in the hair cells of the zebrafish lateral line" in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read More
Glenn Greenwald joined the Liao Lab as a part-time laboratory technician, where he is working on the snook and red drum movement projects. Read More
This summer he is working under Dr. James Liao to set up a new project, with an additional 10 receivers, spearheaded by the FWC and the Rehage Lab at FIU to track snook movements in response to rising ocean temperatures. Read More
A big congratulations to Dr. James Liao, Whitney Laboratory Associate Professor of Biology, who has received promotion to Full Professor from the University of Florida! Read More
Congratulations to PhD Student Brendan Gibbs for his recent publication "Recording central nervous system responses of freely-swimming marine and freshwater fishes with a customizable, implantable AC differential amplifier" in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods. Read More
Congratulations to Dr. Elias Lunsford who published a paper with Dr. James Liao and coauthors in the Proceedings in eLife - "Evolutionary convergence of a neural mechanism in the cavefish lateral line system." Read More
In this primer Dr. James Liao highlights multiple strategies that fish use to swim more efficiently. Some involve structural properties like tail shape and body stiffness, while others involve higher order behaviors to exploit the energy already available in the environment. Read More
On June 14, Elias Lunsford, a graduate student advised by James Liao, Associate Professor of Biology, successfully defended his Ph.D. entitled ““Mechanisms and evolution of sensory feedback and signal transduction in lateral line hair cells”. Read More
Please welcome Dr. Subhra Shankha Koley to Whitney Laboratory! He recently joined the Liao Lab as a postdoctoral associate and will be exploring the various fluid mechanical aspects of the hydrodynamics of fish schooling behind the wake of multiple cylinders and other flow conditions. Read More
Please welcome Esra Goturk to Whitney Laboratory! She recently joined Dr. James Liao's lab as the laboratory manager. Read More
In an effort to increase Red Drum populations in local Florida waters, the University of Florida Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience released 100,000+ Red Drum (known to many as Redfish) into the waterways near and in the area of the lab on February 9, 2022. Laboratory staff, volunteers and local boat captains participated in this initiative. Read More
Congratulations to Liao Lab Ph.D. student Elias Lunsford for winning the Best Student Paper competition at The Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) last week in the Division of Neurobiology, Neuroethology and Sensory Biology. Read More
Congratulations to Dr. James Liao and colleagues for the paper "Convergence of undulatory swimming kinematics across a diversity of fishes" published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The team includes past Liao Lab post doc Dr. Otar Akayeti, now faculty in Wales, as well as Liao's colleagues at Harvard, who looked at the swimming kinematics of 44 fishes and challenge assumptions on previous swimming locomotion. Read More
Last week 3.7 million red drum (Redfish) larvae were released in the Matanzas River as part of Whitney Lab's fish conservation efforts. Adult, breeding red drum were collected as part of the Dr. Jimmy Liao Lab's ongoing fish migration and conservation project. Read More
Congratulations to the Liao Lab who recently published a paper in PLOS Biology on the importance of the lateral line for efficient swimming entitled ‘Corollary discharge enables proprioception from lateral line sensory feedback'. Read More
Congratulations to Dr. James Liao for his new National Science Foundation (NSF) Physics of Living Systems grant award: Schooling through vortex streets: a biological and computational approach to understanding behavior of wild fish Read More
The Liao Lab's Red Drum Tagging Project in one of the 29 National Estuarine Research Reserves in the country was recently shared in the NERRdsontheWater Blog Post: Drumming up Data. Read More
Please welcome Steven Longmire to Whitney Laboratory! He recently joined Dr. James Liao's lab as Lab Manager. Read More
Yamaha Rightwaters is teaming up with Skeeter Boats to provide a SX2250 center console boat with a 250-horsepower Yamaha V MAX SHO outboard to the University of Florida. Scientists in the University’s Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience will use the boat and outboard to conduct a study on redfish activities and numbers to gather better data on the species in Northern Florida. Read More
If you missed our Sip 'N Science recently with Clark Morgan the webinar is now on our YouTube channel. Read More
Join us for our February Webinar! Clark will share the Whitney Lab's project of tracking and monitoring red drum fish movement and migration patterns in Northeast Florida. He will provide details of how acoustic telemetry is used to understand local fish habitat usage, and how this work is helping identify and protect critical spawning and nursery areas to impact conservation. Read More
Congratulations to the Liao Lab for their collaborative research on the numerical simulation of fish swimming recently published in Scientific Reports. The paper is entitled ‘A numerical study of fish adaption behaviors in complex environments with a deep reinforcement learning and immersed boundary–lattice Boltzmann method’. Read More
Congratulations to the Liao Lab, who was recently featured in an article in Today's Science, "Trout go with the Flow (Sometimes)". The article was a write up of the lab's recent publication in the Journal of Experimental Biology, “Oxygen consumption of drift-feeding rainbow trout: the energetic tradeoff between locomotion and feeding in flow". Read More
If you missed our Sip 'N Science recently with Dr. James Liao here is the YouTube link below. We got great feedback from the participants and are looking forward to the next one! Read More
Join us virtually as Whitney Laboratory scientists and educators share our research and animals. Please join us for Sip 'N Science - until we can get back together again! There will be a 20 minute webinar with a Q&A interactive discussion afterwards. Registration is required. We hope you can join us! Read More
Please welcome David Sparks to Whitney Laboratory! He joins Dr. James Liao’s lab as a Ph.D. student. Read More
Congratulations to Dr. James Liao, who recently published a paper in Current Biology titled "An Algorithmic Approach to Natural Behavior." Read More
Please welcome Brendan Gibbs to Whitney Laboratory! He recently joined Dr. James Liao's lab as a laboratory technician who will be investigating sensory modulation of multiple stimuli in freely swimming fish. Read More
Congratulations to Dr. James Liao who was recently featured in Hakai Magazine, as part of their Coastal Jobs Series. Read More
How do bigger fish attack and capture smaller fish? Or for that matter, your fishing lure? The Liao Laboratory, in collaboration with colleagues at UC Irvine, set out to investigate and found that local predatory bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix) cannot anticipate intercepting their fleeing prey, mudminnows (Fundulus heteroclitus). Read More
Please welcome Clark Morgan to Whitney Laboratory! He recently joined Dr. James Liao's lab as a research technician and will be leading the red drum acoustic telemetry project, which will focus on investigating migration and habitat utilization patterns of adult red drum in St. Augustine waters. Read More
Congratulations to Dr. Jimmy Liao for recently receiving a UF Office of Research Award. Two out of only fifteen funded UF Office of Research awards were made to Whitney Laboratory faculty's research - both awards are collaborative with other colleges on campus! Read More
Whitney Lab represented at TEDx in Gainesville at the CADE museum. In the session, Modern Explorers Graduate Student Jessica Welpley and Associate Professor James Liao led roundtable discussions on what it means to be an explorer in science. Read More
Congratulations to the Liao Lab for the recent paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology titled “Head width influences flow sensing by the lateral line canal system in fishes.” Read More
Congratulations to James Liao and Otar Akanyeti for authoring the paper titled “Behavior, Electrophysiology and Robotics Experiments to Study Lateral Line Sensing in Fishes.” Read More
Congratulations to the Liao Lab at Whitney Laboratory for its research being featured in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). Read More
Whitney Laboratory has several new faces this Fall! Please take a moment to read about our newest colleagues below, and join me in welcoming them to Whitney. Welcome, newcomers! Read More
Dr. Otar Akanyeti (former Postdoctoral & Research Faculty of the Liao Lab, now faculty at Aberystwyth University, UK) and Dr. James Liao’s research paper in Journal of Fluid Mechanics focusing on a local Florida Jackfish’s movement was selected for the publication’s cover this month! Read More
The Carl and Marcella Matthaei Ecological Scholarship Fund at the Whitney Laboratory provides support for University of Florida scientists-in-training to have access to the Matanzas River Basin, where we can engage in its biodiversity, ecology and conservation. Read More
Congratulations to the Liao Lab, which has a new publication in Hearing Research entitled “A non-toxic dose of cobalt chloride blocks hair cells of the zebrafish lateral line.” The work was spearheaded by Dr. William Stewart and aided by Dr. Jacob Johansen, both postdoctoral research associates in the Liao Lab. Read More
Congratulations to Dr. James Liao and Dr. Leonid Moroz, who each received the University of Florida Term Professorship Award from the UF Provost’s Office. The awards are based on assessment of academic accomplishment, and awardees have displayed a distinguished career that places them among the leaders in their discipline. Read More
Congratulations to Whitney Lab’s Associate Professor of Biology Jimmy Liao and his team, William Stewart and Otar Akanyeti, for having a paper selected for the 2016 Journal of Experimental Biology Outstanding Paper Prize Shortlist. Read More
We are pleased to announce that Whitney Faculty Dr. James Liao was granted promotion and tenure by the University of Florida Board of Governors to Associate Professor of Biology. He is now tenured faculty in the University of Florida Biology Department! Read More
Congratulations to Dr. James Liao, associate professor of biology, for being featured in The Scientist. The article talks about Dr. Liao’s sensory research taking place here at Whitney Lab. Read More
Elias received a bachelor’s degree in Biology and Ecology from Seattle Pacific University in 2013. While at SPU, he studied the chemically mediated interactions of sea stars and mussels when exposed to natural borne toxins as consequence of harmful algal blooms with Dr. Ryan Ferrer. Read More
To save energy, fish use their heads Scientists used to think a fish’s head motions were just a byproduct of swimming. Using 3-D printed fish, University of Florida scientists Otar Akanyeti, James Liao and collaborators at Harvard showed that head motion can make a fish’s movement and respiration more efficient. Read More