], Nyegaard has led a team of researchers in analyzing ocean sunfish DNA in Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand.
While analyzing skin samples in 2013, she identified an undocumented species, now known as Mola tecta, or the hoodwinker sunfish.
She spent the next four years working with other researchers in the Indo-pacific region to identify and describe Mola tecta.
Nyegaard has continued to help identify specimens of M. tecta throughout the Southern Hemisphere in New Zealand, Australia, Chile, South Africa, the Santa Barbara Channel, and the west coast of Canada.
[1][3][4][5] While working at the Auckland War Memorial Museum in New Zealand, Nyegaard led the effort to identify for the first time the larvae of Mola alexandrini.