Cat Sheppard Begins Human Frontier Science Program Fellowship

We’re excited to share that Cat Sheppard was awarded a prestigious Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) Postdoctoral Fellowship. This three-year fellowship will support her research into how the fine scale structure of marine habitats influences animal behavior in a rapidly changing ocean.

Her project will bridge multiple ecological scales – from the cognitive abilities of individual animals to the distribution of species across regions. By exploring these connections, Cat aims to shed light on how subtle structural features on coral reefs can trigger cascading effects throughout marine ecosystems.

Cat’s fellowship is co-hosted by the Faculty of Science at the University of Lisbon and the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology. At the Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre (MARE) in Lisbon, Cat will focus of how fine-scale structural complexity in the developmental environment affects spatial learning and memory. At HIMB, she will conduct a multi-year mesocosm study, expanding on the work of Zack Rago, to investigate how fine-scale habitat structure influences the space use of prey species. Finally, at the broader scale, she will integrate her findings into species distribution models, linking behavior and habitat complexity to shifts in species ranges under changing ocean conditions.

By combining experiments in behavior, ecology, and modeling, Cat’s work will provide valuable insights into the resilience of marine life in the face of environmental change and habitat loss.