Research

In 2014, I decided to continue working on Biology Education Research and joined (or re-joined) the Automated Analysis of Constructed Response Research Group (AACR) as a Research Associate. AACR is now a national network, with researchers from seven universities and has expanded its scope to other STEM disciplines, besides biology. In AACR we investigate computerized analysis of students’ written responses to open ended questions on big ideas that are important and/or challenging for students to learn, based on the DBER literature. In Biology, we focus on the core concepts identified in Vision & Change (AAAS. 2011. Vision and change: A call to action. Washington, DC). Constructed response assessments allow students to express their knowledge in their own words, which provides instructors greater insight into their students’ thinking and understanding.

I am particularly interested in studying students' struggles understanding genetics, so we can leverage on this knowledge and improve the way we teach it. My student Alexandria Mazur and I have been investigating what are the particular aspects of the flow of genetic information with which students have more difficulties and may represent learning obstacles to master these concepts. Besides analyzing students' responses to open-ended questions, we are also analyzing students' interviews and designing new questions to target specific concepts we are identifying in our analyses.

I was a Postdoctoral Associate at Florida State University for 3 years in David Houle's Lab, working on the Dictionary of Genetic Effects Project, funded by the NSF and NIH. One of the objectives of this project was to characterize the phenotypic effect of genetic perturbations on fly wing shape. Although the whole genome of Drosophila melanogaster has been sequenced, there are many genes for which their function remain unknown. Also, many fundamental questions regarding phenotypic evolution are still unanswered, like whether changes in phenotype are mostly due to the additive effect of many genes with small effects or few genes with big effects. We have manipulated over 100 genes from different developmental pathways and the results are as fascinating as complex, but that makes it just more fun. We are working on writing these publications

During the time I was a graduate student at MSU, I worked in a joint project by Faculty from the Colleges of Natural Science and Education and the Division of Science a Mathematics Education between 2006-2010. For several years, this research group (then called DGA, currently known as AACR) has worked on the reform of large-enrollment introductory biology classes with the aim of improving students’ performance and learning in these courses. One of the objectives of this reform is to make these courses more model reasoning-based and create a more active learning teaching environment. The specific issue at hand is the evaluation constraints encountered in these large-enrollment classes, where multiple-choice evaluations are usually the only practical option, at the expense of the teacher’s ability to detect students’ misconceptions and conceptual barriers. On the other hand, while open-ended questions might be preferred in this respect, they are clearly unfeasible in classes with 400+ students. So, the specific aim of the project has been to explore the feasibility of using lexical analysis software to assess students’ conceptions in science courses. During my collaboration, we were able to successfully adapt text analysis software originally designed for statistical surveys, and our encouraging results awarded us the 2007 SPSS Insight Award in the area of Academic and Scientific Research. The results of this research have been presented at the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) annual meeting and published in the meeting’s proceeding in 2008, 2009, and 2010, and in the 2009 Frontiers in Education annual meeting. We also have a publication in CBE—Life Science Education:

K.C. Haudek, L.E. Prevost, R.A Moscarella, J.E. Merrill, , M. Urban-Lurain. 2012. What are they thinking? Automated analysis of student writing about acid/base chemistry in introductory biology. CBE—Life Science Education (11): 283-293

For my dissertation, I investigated the genetic and morphological consequences of geographical expansion of populations of Peromyscus leucopus (white-footed mouse) in the northern Great Lakes region. I am very interested in understanding how organisms respond to rapid changes in their environment, and current trends in climate change provide a great scenario for this purpose. Some species will evolve new adaptations, others will extinct, and some others will move. P. leucopus is an example of organisms that are moving. But, in its case, this mouse is not moving because its environment it's getting unsuitable, but northern environments are becoming more appropriated. In other words, their northern distribution is expanding. One of the things that intrigued me when I started this project was the geographic origin of the new populations in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (UP). I was also interested in investigating whether the differences in environment between putative progenitor populations and the newly founded populations of this mouse would be reflected in the morphology of their mandibles, which is mostly shaped by diet. If such was the case, it would suggest a rapid morphometric change in response to new selective pressures in the new populations of P. leucopus in the northern Great Lakes. I found that new population of P. leucopus in the UP originated from both Wisconsin and Michigan's Lower Peninsula (LP), the morphology of the mandible of mice in 'old' vs. 'new' populations is different, and differences in climate between these two groups (old and new) seems to drive those morphometric differences. Some of these results can be read in the article below:

I have collaborated with Dr. Miriam Zelditch, at the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, in the characterization of rodent life-history strategies, and an analysis of their evolutionary transformation, focusing particularly on the correlates of precocial and altricial development. We wrote a book chapter together in The Evolutionary Biology of Complex Phenotypes, edited by M. Pigliucci and K. Preston:

M.L. Zelditch & R.A. Moscarella. 2004. Form, function, and life‑history: spatial and temporal dynamics of integration. Pp 274-297. In M. Pigliucci & K. Preston (eds.). The Evolutionary Biology of Complex Phenotypes. Oxford University Press, Oxford

For my master thesis, I analyzed the mitochondrial DNA control region of the three subspecies of Odocoileus virginianus (white-tailed deer) in Venezuela, to evaluate their genetic variability and differentiation and propose conservation units for endangered populations in my country. My advisors were Dr. Marisol Aguilera (Universidad Simon Bolivar) and Dr. Ananias Escalante (Then at the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research; currently at the Institute for Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine at Temple University). This study was published in the Journal of Mammalogy:

R.A Moscarella, M. Aguilera and A. Escalante. 2003. Phylogeography, population structure, and implications for conservation of white‑tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in Venezuela. Journal of Mammalogy 84(4): 1300-1315

During my undergraduate studies, I worked under the guidance of Dr. Marisol Aguilera. For my undergraduate thesis, I raised a colony of rice rats (Oryzomys albigularis) to characterize reproductive and ontogenetic parameters unknown for this species, in the framework of life history strategies. Data obtained in this study were published in two different articles:

R.A. Moscarella, M. Benado, and M. Aguilera. 2001. A comparative assessment of growth curves as estimators of male and female ontogeny in Oryzomys albigularis. Journal of Mammalogy 82(2): 520-526

R.A. Moscarella T. and M. Aguilera. 1999. Growth and reproduction of Oryzomys albigularis (Rodentia, Sigmodontinae) under laboratory conditions. Mammalia, 63(3): 349-362