Joey received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 2013. Her research focused on dark, low-oxygen, anchialine caves, in which a marine layer rests beneath one or more isolated layers of brackish or freshwater. Most anchialine caves contain low invertebrate densities, yet some have inexplicably large biomass of shrimp and remipedes, a rare crustacean found only in subtropical anchialine caves. She integrated studies of geochemistry, microbiology, food web dynamics, and behavior to better understand whether chemosynthesis correlates with macrofaunal density and diversity as well as feeding behaviors in these extreme ecosystems.