Congratulations to Sushant, Yiting, and Matt!

Congratulations graduate students Sushant Potdar, Yiting Ter, and Matt Murphy for receiving nationally or internationally competitive grants this year! Sushant was awarded a Ron Leuschner Memorial Fund for Research on the Lepidoptera Award from the Lepidopterists’ Society, Yiting was awarded a Justice Equity Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Award from the Animal Behavior Society, and Matt Read More …

Collaborative paper, “Multiple loci control eyespot number variation on the hindwings of Bicyclus anynana butterflies” chosen for the 2020 Spotlight collection of research and scholarship excellence published in GSA journals!

We are excited to share that our recent collaborative publication, “Multiple loci control eyespot number variation on the hindwings of Bicyclus anynana butterflies” by Rivera-Colón, A.G., Westerman, E.L., Van Belleghem, S.M., Monteiro, A., and Papa, R., has been selected by the editors of Genetics and G3 for the 2020 Spotlight collection of research and scholarship Read More …

Westerman Lab at SICB

SICB was virtual this year, and we took advantage of the opportunity to present our work and engage with the international SICB community in this new virtual setting. PI Erica Westerman, postdoc Dave Ernst, graduate students Matt Murphy, Grace Hirzel, and Sushant Potdar, former undergraduate lab member Braden Shipman, and current undergraduate Abby Merrill all Read More …

Congratulations Dave on his recent publication on gene expression in the central nervous systems of the Caribbean spiny lobster!

Check out postdoc Dave Ernst’s recent publication “Pulse magnetization elicits differential gene expression in the central nervous system of the Caribbean spiny lobster, Panulirus argus“, in the Journal of Comparative Physiology A! Congratulations on a very cool study identifying numerous genes, including some seemingly unrelated to sensory processes, that are differentially expressed in response to Read More …

Collaborative perspective piece on using Big Data to Crack the Genotype to Phenotype Code published in Integrative and Comparative Biology

As a result of a NSF sponsored Reintegrating Biology Workshop, Erica teamed up with Sarah Bowman of the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Institute, Brad Davidson of Swarthmore College, Marcus Davis of James Madison University, Eric Larson of the University of Illinois, Urbana, and Chris Sanford of Kennesaw State University to write an integrative perspective on how biologists Read More …