Geographers generally define sense of place as the meaning an individual ascribes to a particular location. Collectively, sense of place creates the identity and character of a region and is represented through culinary, literary, visual, and many other forms of art unique to the local culture. Technological advancements in communication have changed sense of place by affecting how these cultural differences are maintained, but also offer new ways of capturing and sharing sense of place. What elements and by which means individuals choose to capture personal representations of an environment shape the way communities as a whole perceive, ascribe meaning to, and amass their own descriptions and representations of that place. My project explores this iterative relationship between visual representation and written description of place. I have selected a collection of crowd-sourced pictures of the local landscape using an app that pulls up publicly posted Instagram images that have been geotagged near the location of the user. I consider these pictures to be modern forms of landscape folk art and conducted visual content analysis to code the images with descriptive terms. I have also created an in-person, crowd-sourced cartography installation consisting of three simplified maps of Seattle that was placed in a gallery where patrons were asked to write, directly on the maps, descriptions of their own sense of place associated with the locations. I then compared the language from the installation to that from the analysis of the Instagram images. Strong similarities between the two suggest the possibility of using crowd-sourced visual representations of place from social media to offer a greater understanding of how natural and built environments evolve and what they mean to the people who inhabit them.

The exceptional biodiversity in the Coral Triangle is partially attributed to the elevated rates of evolution that occur in the shallow reefs of the Indo-Pacific Ocean. Its current geographical location and complex oceanographic history have facilitated rapid speciation in many lineages of coral reef fishes. The processes causing these unique evolutionary patterns can be closely studied in Eviota (Gobiidae), a widespread lineage of rapidly diverging marine fishes. Their restricted dispersal capabilities, short generation time, and specific habitat preferences have facilitated repeated exploitation of novel niches and thus catalyzed their high species diversity. Here, we examine morphological and genetic diversity in relation to biogeography in the Blackbelly Dwarfgoby, the Eviota atriventris species complex. This study analyses E. atriventris from nine localities across its range spanning the Indo-Australian Archipelago to determine whether recent speciation has occurred at fine scales across the Coral Triangle. Our combined morphological and molecular phylogenetic analysis examines differences in meristic, coloration, morphometrics, and gene sequence data from seven mitochondrial and nuclear genes. Results show strong divergence in mitochondrial DNA sequences in Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands (eastern) populations, as compared with a western haplotype from Indonesia. This suggests that lineages within E. atriventris are geographically and genetically isolated. However, evidence from nuclear gene sequences show few differences between groups, and morphological data to support the separation of these populations are inconclusive. These similarities imply that eastern and western haplotypes may be in the early stages of speciation. Due to phylogenetic evidence and lack of geographic overlap, these lineages may be considered separate species under some species concepts. This study illustrates challenges in separating and defining species concepts for closely related species with conserved morphology.

Microhabitat association is a key factor contributing to the diversification of coral reef fishes. For species with specific microhabitat associations, a change in host organism (a coral, sponge, or other organism) on a reef could enable sympatric speciation, where a new species evolves in the same geographic area as the ancestral species. The tusked goby, Risor ruber, is a poorly studied obligate sponge-dwelling coral-reef fish. Preliminary genetic data on R. ruber indicate that there are eight genetically distinguishable lineages based on mitochondrial DNA sequence data and that these linages often live on specific host sponges, pointing to a possibility of ecologically-driven speciation. This study aims to uncover potential connections between morphology, microhabitat, and genetics, by determining if the morphological variation of the recurved canines and other morphological features, such as body length versus depth, correspond with the genetic lineages identified and their host sponge preferences. Measurements will be taken from CT scans and preserved specimens. Fin counts, vertebral counts, and teeth will be examined on cleared and stained specimens. Results of this study may lead to new species descriptions within the genus Risor.