About

Which aspects of life go unnoticed, escaping our view because they are too small, too quiet, or cloaked in a color we cannot see—thus disconnected from human senses?

How many of the intricacies of life surrounding us do we miss? Perhaps it just happened to you with the gray line above. I study biofluorescence, a trait often masked by human perception limits. 

During a night-hike in the Costa Rican rainforest, on a high school Spanish trip, I was lured by the secret signals hidden in the dark. Intrigued by these signals, I commenced my research career at the University of Michigan (UM) examining biofluorescence in living organisms—a light in the dark. Searching for a path back to the rainforest, I began working in the UM Museum of Zoology herpetology collection. I was surrounded daily by 15 million specimens from across the world, immersed in biological diversity that otherwise would have remained invisible to me. This led to my honors thesis project on the ecomorphological structure of a diverse tropical frog community. In my final year at UM, a biofluorescent frog was discovered in South America. My two research worlds suddenly collided. My fascination with “glowing” species and new-found passion for tropical amphibians united in one frog. How is biofluorescence produced? What is its function?