Congratulations to Ella Mathews, Hannah Eckert and Jose Ornelas for presenting their research and completing their project for a thesis of distinction in their major!
Ella Mathews
Hannah Eckert
Jose Ornelas
We spent the spring hatching diapause crickets from 6 allopatric populations and F1 hybrids for our QTL mapping project. We could haven’t have done this without help from Alyson and an amazing team of undergraduates (thank you Ella, Hannah, Jayne, Ariella, Aiden, Whitney, Alexandra, Halle and Isabella!). Isaac has collected a ton of data on male calling song and completed an experiment to test hybrid immune function. I completed test crosses of hybrid male’s ability to fertilize females of each species. Soon we can have a break from the crickets before our fall field season.
Kelsie’s beautiful work comparing testes expression in F1 hybrid dwarf hamsters and mice is now out in Genetics! I am so proud of this paper!
We had a perfect fall lab retreat at the University of Colorado Mountain Research Station with the Taylor Lab (UC Boulder) and Velotta Lab (UDenver).
The Larson Lab is starting a new collaboration with Drs. Martin Garlovsky and Tim Karr to map protein abundance in hybridizing crickets. We were lucky to host Martin this September. During his visit we all attended the Guild of the Rocky Mountain Ecologists and Evolutionary Biologists meeting (GREEBs) at the University of Colorado Mountain Research Station, Martin presented at our department seminar, and we collected tons of cricket spermatophores for protein analysis.
The Larson Lab presenting their research at the Evolution Meeting in Montreal!
The Larson Lab team is honored to be awarded an NSF CAREER to study gene regulatory evolution of post-mating prezygotic barriers. We are excited for the next chapter in cricket hybrid zone research!
Ella Mathews and Alyssa Aragon present their thesis research projects at the DU Undergraduate Research Showcase.
Emily and Erica collaborated with Anna Runemark at Lund University on this survey of gene expression in hybrids. This paper was made possible by support from the University of Denver Internationalization International Partnership & Development Grant and the Swedish Foundation for International Research and Higher Education (STINT).
Runemark A, Moore EM, and EL Larson. 2024. Hybridization and gene expression: beyond differentially expressed genes. Molecular Ecology. 00:e17303. https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.17303
Emily won the Lorraine Flaherty award at the TAGC24 conference for her presentation on parent-of-origin disruption of growth and metabolism. Congratulations Emily!
Erica collaborated with an amazing team to survey the scope and role of postmating prezygotic (PMPZ) barriers in speciation. This was a massive and comprehensive survey of the literature and should be a landmark paper for studies of PMPZ barriers!
Garlovsky MD, Whittington E, Albrecht T, Arenas-Castro H, Castillo DM, Keais GL; Larson EL, Moyle L, Plakke M, Reifová R, Snook RR, Ålund M, AAT Weber. 2023. Synthesis and scope of the role of postmating prezygotic isolation in speciation. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology. 15: a041429. https://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a041429
60 crickets in two hours!
Congratulation to TJ Firneno, Gabrielle Welsh and Peter Nimlos for publishing a case study using field crickets to teach evolution students about phylogenetic trees.
Congratulation to Amy on publishing her first thesis chapter!
A great collaboration through the Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives on Speciation - lead by Zach Gompert and TJ Firneno.
“On September 4, 2023, the sky cleared over Nynäshamn, Sweden, and researchers from across the globe gathered for the 16th Biology of Spermatozoa (BoS) meeting. What followed was a week fuelled by tasty food (find out below about the gelato!) and beautiful weather discussing sperm, eggs, reproductive fluids, fertility, and all things reproductive evolution.”
Whittington, Emma, and M. Alund. "Sperm, eggs, pollen, and gelato, oh my!." Molecular Reproduction and Development(2023).
TJ is leading a massive field effort between the Larson and Firneno Labs! Below are a few photos from their various trips across the field cricket hybrid zone.
Erica and Emily traveled to Lund, Sweden to visit the Runemark Lab and work on a publication with Anna. They enjoyed a traditional Swedish crayfish party and a tour of Scania.
Gabrielle, Scott and Lauren went to Cricket Course, a five-day workshop at the Archbold Biological Station in Florida that provided hands-on training in identification, ecology, behavior, and bioacoustics of crickets. The Larson and Tinghitella Lab team learned taxonomy and bioacoustics, and received training in ensiferan collection, rearing, recording, song analysis, species identification, and pinning.
