During her Fulbright Scholarship, Ariel will be working with Dr. Vera Weisbecker of The University of Queensland in Brisbane. They plan to conduct similar study with Australian short-beaked echidnas (Tachyglossus aculeatus) as Ariel did with pocket gophers. Echidnas and gophers are both digging mammals found across a variety of ecosystems and soil types. Echidnas, unlike gophers, lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. Their research will lay the groundwork for understanding how two digging mammals with radically divergent development strategies evolve differently to similar selection pressures. This work will contribute to the growing field of Evolutionary Development, which looks at the developmental process to understand what variations are possible for certain animals to evolve. This organism-centric approach complements the more traditional approach to evolution research which focuses on how the environment selects for certain variations.
Since graduating from Stanford in 2011, Ariel has taught in both college and high school settings as well as designed mobile and tabletop science games. In 2011-2012 academic year, Ariel taught Human Biology at Stanford as a Course Associate. Observing how difficult it was for students to imagine the dynamic cell environment, Ariel and a team of Stanford faculty applied for a grant to create an educational game. The resulting mobile and web game, Cancer Avenger is now used as part of the introductory biology classes to help students get hands-on experience with stem cells, cell signaling, and cancer.
In 2013, she founded an education company, STEAM Galaxy Studios. STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. The company makes games, books, and toys that emphasize the creativity inherent in STEM as well as encourage a wider diversity of youth to pursue STEAM fields. Ariel’s first card game for STEAM Galaxy, Go Extinct!, was successfully funded through a Kickstarter campaign in May 2014. Go Extinct! teaches people years and older how land animals are related, how to read evolutionary trees, and the evidence scientists use to create the trees.
When Ariel is not looking at mammal bones or making games, she enjoys road biking, reading science fiction, and playing fiddle in a bluegrass band called Nimbleweed.
North American pocket gophers and Australian echidnas provide a unique evolutionary study system: both are digging mammals but have radically different developmental strategies. During her Fulbright scholarship, Ariel plans to complete morphometric (i.e. functional shape) analyses of forelimbs for both gophers and echidnas and also conduct a geographical study of echidnas comparing shape differences to soil types similar to her work with gophers. These two studies would provide a unique comparison of digging monotremes and placentals, as well as lay the groundwork for investigations on how their different developmental strategies impact adaptation to a variety of soil types. As part of the civic engagement component, Ariel will create an educational card game featuring Australian fauna that engages middle and high school students in ideas about evolutionary development. Ariel hopes to publish her research with Dr. Vera Weisbecker of the University of Queensland and will make the card game freely available online to download and print.