Irish Folds: Studying snake vertebrae to decode the mysteries of animal evolution

As a Caleel fellow, Folds received a competitive stipend, additional funding for research expenses and professional development opportunities, which has supported her hands-on research in different U.S. locations, including the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, where she studied snakes that were more than 100 years old.

A native Californian, Folds is particularly drawn to rattlesnakes, which are iconic in her home state. While also native to the Northeast, rattlesnakes are now scarce in the wild - but are still in plentiful supply in museum collections.

During summer research trips to the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven, Connecticut, with her Brown University labmates, Folds has been examining timber rattlesnakes, her study specimen of choice.

Since childhood, Folds has been passionate about studying animals and their distinctive characteristics, "from the uncountable specialties fine-tuned to each niche, to the seemingly incongruent features, to the layered meshes of ecological interactions, to the intricacies of every individual motion," she wrote in her application for the Caleel fellowship. With this project, she's able to quantify some of those "uncountable specialties."

Folds hopes to return to museums after summer ends, including the American Museum of Natural History in New York where she would like to collect data from additional specimens. After graduation, she intends to pursue an advanced degree in evolutionary biology and conduct research in a museum setting.

"This is a pretty cool gateway to that goal," she said.

Folds will present her findings at the University's Summer Research Symposium in early August and plans to turn her project into an honors thesis.