DANIEL ESCOBAR-CAMACHO
Hola! I am Dani and I am evolutionary biologist (mostly). For my PhD I studied the evolution of color vision in tropical freshwater fish, and now I am working on some conservation projects. I am from Ecuador and it was there, while doing my undergrad thesis in the Amazon, that I realized I wanted to study the biology of fishes. Fish have always been fascinating to me, particularly because of the different adaptations they exhibit to inhabit the aquatic environment. I may work on other things but I am a fish lover at my core.
Something that I love about fishes is their coloration patterns and it is probably why so many people have them as pets. However, fish perceive colors differently from us. That made me wonder, how do they perceive their colorful world? or, is it colorful to them at all? how does evolution and ecology shape their visual perception?
Apart from fish vision, I also like to learn about the sensory systems of fish, fish diversity, and evolutionary biology in general. I recently graduated from my graduate program at the University of Maryland, College Park, where I worked at the lab of the mother of fish vision : Dr. Karen Carleton. After returning home I worked as postdoctoral researcher and as a part time researcher/lecturer at the University of the Americas (UDLA). Currently I am working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) under the supervision of Dr. Andrea Encalada. Here I work in a variety of projects, from studying the concentration of mercury in fishes from the Amazon, to fish metacommunities in an intermittent basin of the Pacific slope. I am open to collaborate!
Something that I love about fishes is their coloration patterns and it is probably why so many people have them as pets. However, fish perceive colors differently from us. That made me wonder, how do they perceive their colorful world? or, is it colorful to them at all? how does evolution and ecology shape their visual perception?
Apart from fish vision, I also like to learn about the sensory systems of fish, fish diversity, and evolutionary biology in general. I recently graduated from my graduate program at the University of Maryland, College Park, where I worked at the lab of the mother of fish vision : Dr. Karen Carleton. After returning home I worked as postdoctoral researcher and as a part time researcher/lecturer at the University of the Americas (UDLA). Currently I am working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) under the supervision of Dr. Andrea Encalada. Here I work in a variety of projects, from studying the concentration of mercury in fishes from the Amazon, to fish metacommunities in an intermittent basin of the Pacific slope. I am open to collaborate!