Undergraduate researchers

Pranav Bellur is a rising senior at UCLA majoring in Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution. He joined the Shaffer Lab in July as an undergraduate research assistant, and has been helping out with ongoing conservation projects by carrying out DNA extractions, running agarose gels, organizing/processing data, and related activities, particularly with our western pond turtle research. His time at the lab so far has provided for “a fantastic learning experience and has helped put me on the path towards pursuing a research career in wildlife biology”.

Tatum Delaney is a junior majoring in Environmental Science with a minor in Conservation Biology. In Fall 2021, she joined the Shaffer lab and began working with UCLA La Kretz postdoc Joscha Beninde and undergraduate Germar Gonzalez to estimate population abundances of twenty species of plants and animals across the LA Basin, enabling a better understanding of the relationship between genetic health and population sizes of these species. In her free time, she enjoys doing ecological restoration work on Sage Hill and volunteering in the UCLA Herbarium.

Bethany Woo is a rising senior at UCLA. She is pursuing double majors in Marine Biology and Environmental Science and hopes to further develop her passion for conservation through the Shaffer Lab and graduate school. Currently, she is assisting UCLA postdoc Robert Cooper in studying hybridization between the native California Tiger and nonnative Barred Tiger Salamanders in the Sonoma population. In her free time she enjoys swimming, learning new languages, and reading historical fiction.