ECR Spotlight is a series of interviews with early-career authors from a selection of papers published in Journal of Experimental Biology and aims to promote not only the diversity of early-career researchers (ECRs) working in experimental biology but also the huge variety of animals and physiological systems that are essential for the ‘comparative’ approach. Brooke Quinn is an author on ‘ Unsupervised learning reveals rapid gait adaptation after leg loss and regrowth in spiders’, published in JEB. Brooke conducted the research described in this article while an undergraduate researcher in Tonia Hsieh's lab at Temple University. She is now a PhD candidate in the lab of Sharon Swartz at Brown University, investigating biomechanics and perturbation recovery in animals ranging from spiders to bats.
Brooke Quinn
How did you become interested in biology?
When I was a high school student taking AP Biology, my teacher emphasized hands-on research projects in which we as students designed all aspects of our experiments. Having the freedom to construct our own hypotheses and the opportunity to ‘fail’ by disproving those theories was such an enjoyable process for me, and I decided I would major in biology and try to find other research opportunities in college. I was also lucky enough to take dissection-based anatomy as an elective in school, and so when I found a research lab as an undergraduate that focused on organismal morphology and experimental biomechanics, I was hooked!
Describe your scientific journey and your current research focus
I joined a lab as a freshman and was graciously shown the ropes of research by Dr Hsieh and her graduate students. During my years in the Hsieh lab, I worked on two projects that I spearheaded, one of which being a spider project investigating tarantulas’ gaits after autotomy, and the other focusing on hindlimb bending patterns across vertebrates. Over two summers I journeyed to other research labs as well, one in Italy working on an oxidative stress project in a cancer lab, and one in New York City working at the American Museum of Natural History on an ecomorphology project with bat specimens. My current research is focused on bat biomechanics, specifically the role of sensory hairs in controlling bat flight.
Guatemalan tiger rump tarantula, climbing upside down on glass. Photo credit: Brian Chang.
Guatemalan tiger rump tarantula, climbing upside down on glass. Photo credit: Brian Chang.
How would you explain the main findings of your paper to a member of the public?
Many spiders can voluntarily lose their limbs when stuck or threatened, similar to how some lizard species can drop their tails when captured. While this may be beneficial in the moment, the repercussions of this limb loss have not been investigated in many species. Using high-speed video and multiple analytical methods, we compared tarantulas’ gaits with all limbs intact, after losing two limbs and again after losing two limbs for a second time. The spiders adapted to this limb loss very quickly on both occasions, moving with the same speed and stride frequency within one day of losing the limbs. After limb loss, they repositioned their legs to increase stability and adjust the synchronicity of their legs’ movements.
What is the most important piece of equipment for your research, what does it do and what question did it help you address?
High-speed video cameras are absolutely the most important piece of equipment for my research in biomechanics. The frequency with which many animals move their limbs is far beyond my eyes’ ability to perceive the motion, and high-speed videography gives us the ability to glimpse into these ultrafast motions. I can use this equipment to help me ask and answer questions such as ‘what is the frequency and amplitude of this movement?’ and ‘how much limb extension is occurring over the course of this stroke?’
What is the most important lesson that you have learned from your career so far?
The most important lesson I've learned through studying biology is that everything is a trade-off. This was taught to me starting in introductory biology and I find that it applies whether you're looking at ecology, evolution or organismal biology. If an organism has evolved some trait, it often comes at the cost of another trait that it can't possess, or if an organism is adapted to one niche, it would probably fare poorly if placed in another habitat. I have also found this to be true in life beyond my studies – focusing on one project comes at the cost of time that could have been spent on another, etc.
Brooke Quinn's contact details: Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Brown University, 85 Brown St, Providence, RI 02906, USA.
E-mail: [email protected]
