Sarah Bouchard
Sarah Bouchard
Biology Seminar
Date & Time
Thu, Apr 18
11:00 AM
Location
Mateer Hall G-01
Contact
Beth Snyder
330-263-2379
Email
Sarah S. Bouchard, Ph.D. Assistant Professor in the Department of Life and Earth Sciences at Otterbein College will present... topic to be determined.
Sarah received her B.A. from Kalamazoo College, Department of Biology in 1995, her M.S. from the University of Florida, Department of Zoology in 1998 and her Ph.D. from the University of Florida, Department of Zoology, in 2004.
As a nutritional ecologist, Sarah is interested in questions related to the influence of digestive physiology on the diet choices of animals. Such questions can be critically important to understanding the life history and behavior of species because diet choices often have profound effects on growth, survivorship and fecundity. Currently, her research focuses on ontogenetic diet shifts from carnivory to herbivory in freshwater turtles. Specifically, she investigates the effect of body size on the ability of turtles to process plant and animal material. She also examines how associative effects, or non-additive interactions between diet items, influence the selection of mixed diets. This aspect of her research explores the relative costs and benefits of consuming a diet item given other recently ingested items. Her research into ontogenetic diet shifts and associative effects has involved detailed investigation into digestive processing (e.g., measuring intake, digestibility, and diet transit time), microbial fermentation by gut symbionts, and gut morphology.