Dejana Mitrovic

Dejana completed her Honours BSc at Wilfrid Laurier University with Profs. Michael Wilkie and Matt Smith, where her research examined NMDA receptor responses to anoxia in goldfish, before pursuing her MSc in Biology at the University of Ottawa in Prof. Steve Perry’s lab. There, she studied the effects of hypoxia and temperature on goldfish gill structure and function, including developing approaches to assess the number and position of mitochondria-rich cells within the changing interlamellar cell mass of the gill.

She is currently a PhD candidate co-supervised by Prof. Michael Wilkie at Wilfrid Laurier University, where her research examines how temperature and lampricide mixtures influence toxicity in sea lamprey and non-target fish such as rainbow trout. She has developed and optimized LC-MS/MS methods to quantify lampricide concentrations in tissues and better understand exposure-response relationships. Her work has shown that increasing temperature can significantly reduce TFM toxicity in sea lamprey, likely due to enhanced detoxification capacity, while responses in rainbow trout are more variable and reflect more complex physiological interactions.

She has also investigated how combining TFM with niclosamide alters toxicity, demonstrating that mixture effects can shift between synergistic and antagonistic depending on concentration. Her work suggests that these interactions may be driven by competition for shared detoxification pathways, influencing how both compounds are processed and accumulated in different tissues.

Together, this research highlights the importance of considering both environmental factors and mixture effects when determining treatment strategies, helping to optimize sea lamprey control while minimizing impacts on non-target species.