Profile for Jessica Judson

Brief biography

I grew up in Texas, where much of my family still lives. I received my Bachelor's and Master's degrees at Mississippi State University, where I studied inbreeding depression and hybridization in an endangered Caribbean iguana, the Lesser Antillean iguana. While at Mississippi State, I also completed an internship with the San Diego Zoo Beckman Center for Conservation Research. While there, I studied inbreeding in the endangered California Condor, and I was part of the group that discovered a rare phenomenon of facultative parthenogenesis in this large bird. Two male condors were the result of the duplication of half of their mother's DNA, and have no fathers. These experiences ignited my passion for using genetic tools for conservation of endangered species.

Following my time at Mississippi State, I pursued a Doctorate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Iowa State University. While in Ames, I studied population genomics, parentage dynamics, and the role of color in mate choice of painted turtles across the western United States. I also became obsessed with the genomics and evolution of life history of the western terrestrial garter snakes surrounding Eagle Lake in California; I spent several summers splitting time on the Mississippi River studying turtles before flying to California to end the summer in the mountains with the snakes. 

After my PhD, I felt the pull to return to conservation questions with my new knowledge of genomic tools and bioinformatic analyses. I did a postdoc (a position between getting a PhD and starting a full time faculty position) with Sarah Fitzpatrick at Michigan State University studying the impact of migration on population recovery following bottlenecks and inbreeding. I lived and worked in central Florida at Archbold Biological Station, where I manipulated populations of eastern mosquitofish in outdoor tanks to understand how genetic rescue (the recovery of endangered populations following migration) interacts with environmental stress (climate change) to impact population extinction or recovery.

I remain passionate about using genomic tools to understand the evolution and ecology of vertebrates (mostly non-avian reptiles) and assist in conservation of endangered species.