Anusha Bishop is a Northern California ARCS Scholar pursuing her PhD in Environmental Science Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. She is passionate about studying genetic diversity to see how it might inform the scientific community about the challenges that California species face. Her research is already making an impact by helping further conservation efforts.

Did you have any experiences that influenced you to choose evolutionary biology as a research field?

“I’ve always loved nature since I was a kid, but what got me really interested in research and evolutionary biology was the genetics lab I worked in when I was in college. When a lot of people think about genetics, they think about family trees and genes, but there is really so much more information that you can get from the genome. For example, the first research project I ever did in undergrad was using genetics to figure out where trafficked baby Galapagos tortoises had come from. My undergraduate thesis also used genetics to study connectivity in Tsetse flies, which transmit diseases across sub-Saharan Africa.”

Can you give an overview of your current research?

“The larger issue that I’m interested in is the wide scale loss of biodiversity, which we’re facing due to global change. One of the biggest challenges is that we don’t even know what we’re losing. When we think about biodiversity loss, we’re often thinking about the extinction of species, however within species there is also a lot of diversity. That’s what’s often lost first.

My research focuses on understanding variation within species by looking at the finest scale of biodiversity, which is genetic diversity. My work involves building and applying tools to figure out what causes genetic diversity to be created, maintained, and lost. It also looks at how genetic diversity is shaped by the environment that the organisms live in. This can tell us how healthy populations are, how they’re connected across space, and how they might respond to future climate change.”

Why is your research important?

“A really good example of how this research is important is through one of the bigger projects I am part of. There’s a large project called the California Conservation Genomics Project. Their goal is to form the conservation of California species and help build climate change resiliency. The CCGP has gathered genomic data for over 200 species across California. It is one of the largest multi-species genomic data sets ever created, and it’s opened up super exciting opportunities for advancing conservation efforts.

My research with the CCGP involves building and applying these new computational tools and genomic approaches to help us figure out where hotspots and cold spots of genetic diversity are located. It is also helpful in identifying factors that might be impacting that genetic diversity, such as climate change or human development.”

How has ARCS impacted you?

“ARCS has been crucial for my career because it gives me the ability to focus on my research and big projects like CCGP. It’s also given me the freedom to support new avenues of research, which is really important because I’ve been looking to the future and considering what I want to do after I graduate with my PhD. I’ve also been able to work on my computational skills and conduct fieldwork. All of these things would be totally impossible without ARCS support.”