Beneath the Surface

As part of the University’s expansion of its research initiatives, Associate Professor Dr. Elizabeth Borda and Dr. Fernando Calderon-Gutierrez, a postdoctoral research fellow, are on a mission to discover and study strange and rarely seen creatures living in underwater caves. The pair has launched multiple expeditions to the Yucatan Peninsula and Cozumel Island, Mexico, where they explore cave systems filled with otherworldly formations and odd critters. Borda and Calderon’s research, which is part of a nearly $1 million project funded by the National Science Foundation, uses genomic tools to learn more about the unique biodiversity living in these caves while unearthing new information about evolutionary relationships.