First person – Shannon Taylor

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Biology Open, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Shannon Taylor is first author on ‘The torso-like gene functions to maintain the structure of the vitelline membrane in Nasonia vitripennis, implying its co-option into Drosophila axis formation’, published in BiO. Shannon is a Master's student in the lab of Peter Dearden at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, investigating evolution and development (EvoDevo) and the philosophy of science, thus far using Nasonia as a model species to study various EvoDevo questions.