At University of the Pacific, undergraduate biology students participate in research aimed at predicting how human activity and climate change affect wildlife. Guided by biology professor Jane Khudyakov, students contribute to ongoing studies on elephant seals and other mammals, generating insights that could help protect vulnerable animal populations and support conservation efforts.
“I’ve had students accompany me to tag seal pups at Point Reyes National Seashore, where I have a longstanding collaboration with the marine mammal biologists there.” Khudyakov said. “Undergraduate students have been involved in all aspects of our research, including the research that we do with elephant seals.”
In the classroom, Khudyakov assigns her undergraduate students to work in teams on separate projects. They all use similar laboratory techniques but ask different research questions. Students choose their projects from the types available and work on them over two semesters.
Maliysia Keo ’25 is researching the post-natal development of female elephant seals and their responses to stress. Using the milk samples Khudyakov collected with her team of undergrad and master’s students over the years, Keo has been able to analyze the proteins in each sample.
“We know that the stress hormones in elephant seals are passed along from the mother to the pup. So now we’re trying to figure out which specific proteins are being transferred from the mother to the pup, during lactation and in fasting,” said Keo.
Using the biology department’s state-of-the-art mass spectrometer system, Keo has been able to break down and purify proteins in each sample to analyze and compare them to other samples that may show an increase of stress or other developmental factors.
“This is a really useful technique in animals that have not been well studied and don’t have very well characterized genomes,” said Khudyakov.
The students analyze the data they generate, which they then present at conferences such as Pacific’s Research and Creativity Showcase and the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Annual Meeting. Khudyakov then publishes the data in manuscripts with undergraduate student coauthors.
“We’re hoping to use the undergraduate data together with graduate student data to publish a stronger and more comprehensive paper. I integrate undergraduate student researchers into all aspects of our work,” said Khudyakov.
This research will create a broader understanding of elephant seals and their offspring’s development. By examining the transfer of stress hormones, Khudyakov and her students hope to understand the long-term consequences of environmental stressors on both mothers and their young. The findings will help predict the impacts of climate change and other human activities on wildlife populations and inform the average person on conservation strategies that can deepen our knowledge of maternal health in mammals.