Julia Notar

Contact Information:

Room 302, Biological Sciences Building
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708
julia.notar@duke.edu

Education:

BS, Marine Biology, UCLA (2009)
MS, Biology, UCLA (2016)

Research Interests:

I am interested in how animals use light in their environments to make decisions. Specifically, I focus on the diffuse photosensory abilities of some marine invertebrates from a functional behavioral standpoint: how much can these animals “see” and how does that inform the choices they make? Sea urchins, which appear to function as a compound body-eye, provide a fascinating model for investigating this phenomenon.

Publications:

Gordon, M.S. and Notar, J.C. (2015) Can systems biology help to separate evolutionary analogies (convergent homoplasies) from homologies? Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 117: 19-29

Notar, J.C. and Gessow, J. (2009) Ecology of an intertidal leech: expanding the range of Malmiana buthi. Abstracts of the Annual Meeting of the Southern California Academy of Sciences. Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences 108: 112