Melissa Betters is a Ph.D. student at Temple University who joined the Cordes Lab in Fall 2018. Prior to starting her doctoral studies at Temple, Melissa earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Biological Sciences from Florida State University. She has participated in a number of different marine research projects during her studies, most recently including a survey of deep-sea coral in the Papahānaumokuākea National Monument. Broadly speaking, she is interested in the processes that generate and maintain deep-sea biodiversity. She is particularly interested in the evolutionary origins of species at chemosynthetic ecosystems, such as methane seeps. She hopes that her research will help elucidate the evolutionary history between species specializing in chemosynthetic ecosystems and their non-chemosynthetic and shallow-water counterparts.
Deep-Sea Ecology / Ocean Exploration