Zuania Colón-Piñeiro, a doctoral student in the Longo Lab, has been awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology (NSF-PRFB). Her project, PRFB: Rules of Life: Characterizing maternal nutritional profiles to understand reproduction-immunity tradeoffs in amphibians, will explore how seasonality and disease shape nutrient transfer from parents to offspring in amphibians.
Over the next three years, Zuania will integrate fieldwork, laboratory experiments, and mathematical modeling to quantify trade-offs addressing how environmental and biological interactions affect the nutrient reserves inherited by the offspring. Beyond advancing scientific knowledge in ecology and evolution, her work will have broader impacts activities, including the development of bilingual educational materials, mentorship opportunities for students, and open-access resources to support amphibian conservation efforts.
Zuania’s postdoctoral research will be co-sponsored by Ana Longo (Biology), David Blackburn (Florida Museum of Natural History), and Hannah Vander Zanden (Biology). We congratulate her on this well-earned recognition and look forward to the discoveries ahead!