This week on The Sci-Files Chelsie and Danny interview Connie Rojas.

Connie is a 4th year Ph.D. Candidate in Integrative Biology and the Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior (EEBB) program at Michigan State University. She is investigating the interactions between animal hosts and their symbiotic microbial communities, a.k.a the ‘microbiome.’ Specifically, she is studying how the microbiome affects animal hosts’ physiology and behavior, and how the host and its environment affect their symbiotic microbial communities. Connie is applying her research questions to the social carnivore, the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta). Her research is at the interface of ecology, animal behavior, microbiology, and genomics. Her project brings together fieldwork data, laboratory work and computational tools.

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