Toby Daly-Engel, director of the Shark Conservation Lab at Florida Tech, recently joined a Zoom gathering from the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology to discuss with other co-authors research she has guided and helped conduct for the non-profit organization Minorities in Shark Science (MISS).
Daly-Engel’s lab was selected to be the genetics hub for MISS’s Integrated Coordinated Open Networked Inclusive Conservation (ICONIC) Oceans initiative, which brings together scientists, policymakers, fishers and other stakeholders focused on the conservation, protection and sustainable use of marine resources.
Under this initiative, the lab hosted MISS members in 2024 and 2025 who were interested in learning genetics techniques and analyses. They worked with Florida Tech undergraduate student researchers – also members of MISS – to characterize within-species and between-species genetic diversity in 51 tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier) and 54 whiprays (Brevitrygon spp) from Sri Lanka, Daly-Engel said.
The MISS research across multiple papers was presented late last year in a special edition of the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology’s flagship journal, Integrative & Comparative Biology. Daly-Engel’s appearance on the Zoom broadcast begins at the 12:09 mark.
