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Ralph Saporito
Professor - Biology
Phone Number
Location
Dolan Science Center W211
Employee Type
Faculty
Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director
Degrees: B.S. in Biology, Florida International University, Miami, Florida. Ph.D. in Biology, Florida International University, Miami, Florida. NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia.
Expertise: Chemical Ecology, Tropical Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution, with an emphasis on predator-prey interactions and aposematism.
Research Interests
My research is broadly focused on the ecology and evolution of antipredator adaptations in animals, particularly chemical defenses and aposematism. I am especially interested in studying these defensive adaptations in vertebrates (mainly amphibians and reptiles) that acquire chemical defenses from their diet. Most of my research surrounds the study of brightly colored poison frogs and the arthropod prey from which they sequester alkaloid-based chemical defenses. My research program is highly integrative, involves a variety of comparative and experimental approaches (both field- and lab-based), and incorporates aspects of ecology, evolution, behavior, morphology, natural history, and frog and arthropod chemistry.
Recent Courses
BL 230/231 – Human Anatomy & Physiology & Lab BL 156 – Principles of Biology II BL 159 – Principles of Biology III BL 406 – Tropical Field Biology
Selected Publications
Lawrence, J.P., Rojas, B., Fouquet, A., Mappes, J., Blanchette, A., Saporito, R.A., Bosque, R.J., Courtois, E.A., and Noonan, B. (2019) Weak warning signals can exist in the absence of gene flow. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, published online, September 3, 2019.
Saporito, R.A., Russell, M.W., Richards-Zawacki, C.L., and Dugas, M.B. (2019) Experimental evidence for maternal provisioning of alkaloid defenses in a dendrobatid frog. Toxicon, 161:40-43.
Stuckert, A.M., Saporito, R.A., and Summers, K. (2018) An empirical test indicates only qualitative honest aposematic signaling within a population of vertebrates. Journal of Herpetology, 52(2): 201-208.
Saporito, R.A. and Grant, T. (2018) Comment on Amézquita et al. (2018) "Conspicuousness, color resemblance, and toxicity in geographically diverging mimicry: The pan-Amazonian frog Allobates femoralis." Evolution, 72-4: 1009-1014.
Hovey, K.J., Seiter, E.M., Johnson, E.E., and Saporito, R.A. (2018) Sequestered alkaloid defenses in the dendrobatid poison frog Oophaga pumilio provide variable protection from microbial pathogens. Journal of Chemical Ecology, 44: 312-345.
