Indigenous Marine Scientist Studies Fish Feeding Evolution in Panama | |
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Credit: Ana Endara/STRI |
Rodnyel Arosemena is of Dule (from Guna Yala) descent but grew up in the city. Unlike his parents, who grew up in the Guna Yala region, the Panamanian Caribbean Sea was not central to his childhood. His first memory of the beach is at the age of eight, but once he started college, his roots claimed him back: he is now a marine biologist. He is also one of the few people in the world trained in compound-specific stable isotope analysis of amino acids (CSIA-AA). |
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Arosemena was chosen to train in CSIA-AA after a year working with various marine labs at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). This led him to spend two months at the University of Hong Kong, where STRI postdoctoral researcher Jon Cybulski taught him how to analyze fish muscle samples with the cutting-edge technique for a project on sister fish species across the isthmus of Panama. |
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