Elizabeth Hinchey
Ph.D. candidate
School of Marine Science
Virginia Institute of Marine Science
College of William & Mary
ehinchey@vims.edu

Beth's interest in aquatic invertebrates began at an early age, when she and her brother and sister would search for snails and crawfish in their backyard stream. Family vacations to the shores of North Carolina introduced her to marine invertebrates, and she's been hooked ever since! During her years as an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame and as a graduate student at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Beth has been lucky enough to study aquatic invertebrates in a wide array of habitats. These collaborations have included studies of zebra mussels in lakes, aquatic insects in streams, worms and clams in estuaries, zooplankton in the mid-Atlantic Ocean, and deep-sea invertebrates in the Norwegian Greenland Sea. For her dissertation research, Beth is investigating how communities of benthic invertebrates (the bottom-dwelling animals that live in the mud) in estuaries respond to environmental stress caused by sediment disturbance.