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 presenting their research at the Evolution Meeting in Montreal!
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!
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.
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.
Alyson Emery received and NSF INTERN award to participate in research through the Denver Botanic Gardens with Dr. April Goebl.
The Larson Lab, Taylor Lab (University of Colorado Boulder), Runemark Lab (Lund University), and Velotta Lab (University of Denver) had a fall research retreat at CU’s Mountain Research Station. Everyone presented their research, cooked lots of great food and carved pumpkins.
On Friday, May 13th, Amy Byerly successfully defended her Master’s degree and graduated this spring quarter. Congratulations Amy!
Kelsie’s first chapter of her dissertation is now published in Evolution! Beautiful work and beautiful figures, now memorialized in her new mug! Congratulations Kelsie!
Exciting to see these new preprints online:
Kelsie’s first chapter of her dissertation - super proud of this one! https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.08.451646
An amazingly fun project with the awesome Mollie Manier: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.15.468624v1
A new paper on disrupted X chromosome expression in sterile mouse hybrids: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.12.468424v1
And two impressive collaborations led by the Good Lab at the University of Montana from Emily Kopania: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.04.455131v2 and from Emily Moore: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.15.468705v2
Kelsie presented her work on hybridization in Colorado cottontails at the American Genetics Association 2021 meeting Snowbird, Utah.
Kelsie gave two awesome talks in the last few weeks. The first was about her work on hybridization in Colorado cottontails at the American Society of Mammalogists and the second was about patterns of gene expression in complex tissues at the Evolution meeting.
Congratulations to Kelsie Hunnicutt, who was awarded the R.C. Lewontin Early Award from the Society for the Study of Evolution!
Erica and Kelsie reviewed Shrews, Chromosomes and Speciation edited by Jeremy B. Searle, P. David Polly and Jan Zima for Evolution. The review is online in early view.
Congratulations to Brooke, who was awarded a Northwest Scientific Association Student Research Grant!. Brooke will use this grant to travel to the Washington (whenever travel restrictions are lifted) to collected red and black sticklebacks.