Thermal Tolerance and Post-Heat Stress Recovery in Porcelain Crabs
Candido Santos (He/Him) (2028) | Integrative Biology (Integrative Human Biology emphasis)
Candido Santos is a SURF L&S scholarship recipient and a third-year Integrative Biology major with an emphasis in Integrative Human Biology. Working in the Stillman Lab, Candido is investigating how porcelain crabs respond to heat stress by comparing the thermal tolerance and recovery of species with different environmental adaptations. By measuring physiological responses such as heart rate and metabolic function, his research aims to better understand how marine organisms cope with rising temperatures and provide insights into the impacts of climate change on vulnerable coastal ecosystems.
What made you choose this research project? How did your interest in your research topic emerge?
I chose this research project because I’ve become deeply interested in how organisms physiologically respond to environmental stress, especially under rapidly changing climate conditions. Through my coursework in evolutionary physiology and genomics, as well as my time working in the Stillman Lab, I started to see how temperature stress can reveal fundamental differences in how species survive and adapt. That curiosity led me to focus on comparative thermal tolerance and recovery in intertidal crustaceans.
What is your project about (in simple terms)? How does it relate to issues or ideas you have been studying in your coursework?
In simple terms, my project examines how different crab species respond to heat stress and how well they recover afterward. I’m comparing a thermal specialist species to a more generalist species to understand how their physiology—like heart rate and metabolic function—responds to extreme temperatures. This connects directly to concepts I’ve been studying in class, including physiological limits, adaptation, and the biological impacts of climate change.
What are you most excited about this summer? Will your research entail travel, access to special collections, or experiments?
This summer, I’m most excited about gaining hands-on experience running experiments and collecting real physiological data. My research will involve controlled lab experiments, measuring responses to heat stress, and analyzing recovery patterns. I’m also excited to deepen my independence as a researcher and take ownership of a project from start to finish.
What do you hope to learn from this experience? What would success look like for you? What challenges do you anticipate confronting?
From this experience, I hope to strengthen my experimental design skills, data analysis, and scientific communication. Success for me would mean producing clear, meaningful results that contribute to our understanding of how organisms cope with environmental stress, and ideally working toward an honors thesis. I anticipate challenges in troubleshooting experiments and interpreting complex biological data, but I see those as opportunities to grow.
What do you hope comes out of this research? What impact do you hope your research will have?
Ultimately, I hope this research contributes to a broader understanding of how species will respond to climate change. By identifying differences in stress tolerance and recovery, this work could help predict which organisms are most vulnerable and inform conservation strategies moving forward.