{"251901":{"#nid":"251901","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Danielle Dixson, Biologist Since the Tender Age of 5","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EDanielle Dixson is a new faculty member in the School of Biology this year, but she\u2019s not new to Georgia Tech. She spent the previous two years as a post-doctoral fellow in Professor Mark Hay\u2019s lab. Before that she received her Ph.D. from James Cook University in Australia and her B.S. from the University of Tampa. One might say she was brought up with biology in her future \u2026 the Minnesota Zoo was right behind her back fence as a kid.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EDanielle Dixson\u003C\/strong\u003E: The Minnesota zoo has a special kind of school, kind of like a flagship school, it\u2019s called the School of Environmental Studies. It\u2019s actually at the zoo. So you take all your classes your junior and senior year at the zoo, and they incorporate biology into everything that you\u2019re doing. So I got to take marine biology in Minnesota as a junior, because we got to use the aquariums there.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EDavid Terraso:\u003C\/strong\u003E So, is that where your interest in biology began?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EDixson:\u003C\/strong\u003E I\u2019m one of those kids who, when I was five, I said I wanted to be a marine biologist and my parents were like ok. And to anyone who asked, I said, \u201cOh, I want to be a marine biologist.\u201d They said, \u201cOh, ok,\u201d thinking I would grow out of it or something. It\u2019s like every little kids dream, but I never changed my mind.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ETerraso:\u003C\/strong\u003E Tell us about your research and what you\u2019re looking to do in the next few years.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EDixson:\u003C\/strong\u003E My research in general is how do chemical cues, or smells in the water, give information that cause a behavioral response in fish.\u0026nbsp; So, what smells elicit certain behavioral patterns, and how does that reflect in community dynamics and settlement selection.\u003Cbr \/\u003EA lot of my work looks at larval fish, or juvenile fishes. And when marine fish reproduce they lay eggs, or spawn into the water column, and the larva, or the eggs, go off into the pelagic environment, and they need to come back to the reef. And what I\u2019m trying to figure out is what chemical cues do they use to decide what reef is a good reef and what reef is a bad reef.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ETerraso:\u003C\/strong\u003E Tell us about some of your research projects.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EDixson:\u003C\/strong\u003E So a big project of mine in Fiji is looking at the marine protected areas there, looking at how, if you have a protected area there that\u2019s a very pristine, healthy habitat and you have one that\u2019s a very non-pristine protected area (where it\u2019s essentially trashed because people fish in it and are always in it and there\u2019s runoff and a lot of algae and not a lot of fish) looking at how we can get coral back into that non-protected area. And it seems like the chemical cues may be responsible for the coral and fish larva rejecting that area as a habitat, because it\u2019s so different from the healthy area right next door. So that\u2019s been one of the primary focuses of my post-doc, and I\u2019ll continue doing some of that work with Mark Hay as well.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnother thing that I work on is ocean acidification and the effect that that has on behavior and the effect that that has on mostly larval fishes. I\u2019ve started doing some projects on sharks that I\u2019ll continue while at Tech. I\u2019ve been talking to the Georgia Aquarium about collaborating with them and using some of their shark eggs that they get pretty regularly and treating them with different levels of ocean acidification scenarios that are going to be happening in the near future, within the next 100 years, and looking at how that\u2019s affecting the behavioral response of the animals.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ETerraso:\u003C\/strong\u003E Looking further into your career, say 30 years from now, what do you want to have accomplished?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EDixson:\u003C\/strong\u003E I guess 30 years out, I\u2019d like to continue in the same role and be able to have provided the marine community with a much better understanding of how chemical cues work in the marine environment and how the sensory system plays a huge roll in the behavior that comes across with fish and coral larvae.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn the recent past, we\u2019ve been thinking these tiny fish larvae, when they were out in the open ocean, that they were just passive particles drifting around with no say in where they were going. And now in a very short time, it\u2019s been shown, mostly through the ability to use genetics in different ways, that they\u2019re actually going to specific places. We don\u2019t know why they\u2019re going to those specific places. We don\u2019t know how they\u2019re able to manage to get to these places, but clearly their behavior is not passive.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThey\u2019re overcoming ocean currents. They\u2019re overcoming all of these obstacles that we thought they would not be able to do. And they\u2019re getting to these locations and their behavior is really the only way you can explain it.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn order to do something, you need a motive to do it, and the sensory cues are what provides them information to decide where to go. So I\u2019d really like to get into how different sensory systems interact. So if you get an auditory cue and an olfactory cue and the olfactory cue is a positive stimulus, but the auditory cue might not sound right, which would you follow? What choices will you make?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EDanielle Dixson is a new faculty member in the School of Biology this year, but she\u2019s not new to Georgia Tech. She spent the previous two years as a post-doctoral fellow in Professor Mark Hay\u2019s lab. Before that she received her Ph.D. from James Cook University in Australia and her B.S. from the University of Tampa. One might say she was brought up with biology in her future \u2026 the Minnesota Zoo was right behind her back fence as a kid.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Danielle Dixson is a new faculty member in the School of Biology this year, but she\u2019s not new to Georgia Tech. She spent the previous two years as a post-doctoral fellow in Professor Mark Hay\u2019s lab."}],"uid":"27245","created_gmt":"2013-11-07 09:56:39","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:15:18","author":"Troy Hilley","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2013-11-07T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2013-11-07T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"251891":{"id":"251891","type":"image","title":"Danielle Dixson","body":null,"created":"1449243813","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 15:43:33","changed":"1475894931","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:48:51","alt":"Danielle Dixson","file":{"fid":"198126","name":"danielle.dixson.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/danielle.dixson_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/danielle.dixson_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":251630,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/danielle.dixson_0.jpg?itok=ftrnOC13"}}},"media_ids":["251891"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.biology.gatech.edu\/","title":"School of Biology"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.biology.gatech.edu\/people\/danielle-dixson","title":"Danielle Dixson"}],"groups":[{"id":"1275","name":"School of Biological Sciences"}],"categories":[{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"},{"id":"146","name":"Life Sciences and Biology"}],"keywords":[{"id":"79191","name":"Danielle Dixson"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":["david.terraso@cos.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}