Laura Segura Hernández is a NOMIS–STRI Fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama.

Segura Hernández is from Costa Rica, where she earned her BS and Licenciatura degrees at the University of Costa Rica. During that time, she worked on projects related to natural history, sexual selection, behavior and biogeography of arachnids. She completed her PhD at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in the US, studying behavior and ecophysiology of pseudoscorpions. Beyond her research, Segura Hernández has developed outreach activities for children and the general public and has served as a coordinator, instructor and invited speaker for multiple courses.

Research Focus

During a previous fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution, Segura Hernández documented natural history information about the hitchhiking behavior (phoresy) of pseudoscorpions and conducted physiological and behavioral assays to understand how this dispersal behavior is affected by environmental changes. These experiences motivated her to further pursue research focused on environmental effects on arthropod behavior and physiology.

Now, as a NOMIS–STRI Fellow, Segura Hernández is assessing how abiotic and biotic environmental factors affect sociality. To do so, she is focusing on a social pseudoscorpion species, which has been documented to have complex social behaviors – including cooperative foraging and group dispersal. Combining observations and manipulations in both the field and the laboratory, her research will provide key baseline information on the sociality of an understudied taxon as well as provide an integrative understanding of how environment can shape sociality.

Feature image: Laura Segura Hernández portrait by Jorge Aleman; Pseudoscorpion photo courtesy of Laura Segura Hernández