Ciera Martinez's profile

2018, Sep 11    

Biography

Ciera Martinez is a biologist who spent the last ten years studying the evolution of morphology. During her PhD she explored how plant form develops and now aims to understand how non-coding DNA defines developmental signals during early fruit fly development. She is a Berkeley Institute of Data Science Fellow where she explores her love of all things data. And really likes fancy microscopes and cats.

Skills

Ciera knows a lot about Plant Biology, Evolution, R, and knitting.

Awesome Animal Pick

I choose the Okapi, because it’s looks like a mix between a two other awesome animals - zebras and giraffes. Also, being an evolutionary biologist I love all organisms considered to be exaples of “living fossils”

Animal Family Member

Okapis are part of the Giraffidae family, and are thus closely related to giraffes! In fact, these two species are the only living members of the family. What’s cool about them are that both giraffes and (male) Okapis have these horn-like protuberances called ossicones. Female Okapis, on the other hand, are special and have hair whorls!

References

1. Okapi Img 1 life of animals; the mammals, 1852: Link to page
2. Okapi Img 2: Painting by Sir Harry Johnston (1858-1927), lithograph by P. J. Smit - Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1901, London, UK https://archive.org/stream/proceedingsofzoo19012zool#page/n51/mode/2up
3. Giraffe Img link to image