The Schibbyske Talent Award by the Natural History Society of Denmark is awarded to “important and noteworthy research, dissemination or other biological efforts, with relevant documentation for a remarkable effort within natural history." 

Merin received this award for her work on asymmetry in the shell morphology of Testudines, the taxonomic order that includes turtles and tortoises.

Shell development in Testudines has been known to be influenced by environmental factors, especially pollution, causing structural asymmetry. Merin 3D-scanned 35 Testudine specimens from the Zoological Museum of Denmark, which were collected during pre-industrial times when environmental pollution levels could have been significantly lower than in current times. She also retrieved relatively recent Testudine shell data from online repositories, accumulating a total of 128 specimens belonging to 92 species, and demonstrated the presence of significant directional and fluctuating asymmetries in Testudines, even in specimens from pre-industrial times. This study contributes to the current understanding of Testudine shell development, and inspires further enquiry into environmental explanations of shell development in pre-industrial Testudines.