Year entered program: 2021
Department: Biology
Mentor: Lisa Barrow, Ph.D.
Interests: Evolutionary Biology

Bio

Chris McDaniels attended the University of Texas at Dallas and majored in biology. Halfway through his undergraduate degree, he transferred to the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) due to its extensive herpetological collection, labs, and researchers. At UTA, he joined the lab of Dr. Matthew Fujita. He assisted a graduate student, TJ Firneno, on a project describing a new species of frog from Honduras that led to the co-authorship of a paper. Along with participating in fieldwork for other projects, McDaniels also participated in the McNair Scholars program, where he researched and wrote a paper on opsins in the skin of two color forms of Common Lesser Earless Lizards (Holbrookia maculata).

McDaniels is broadly interested in herpetology (the study of reptiles and amphibians). Specific areas of interest include phylogeography and diversification, particularly with understudied, geographically variable taxa.