Many congratulations to our fantastic seniors, Gabby Agcaoili, Braden Shipman, Mallory Kim, and Kierstan Taylor!! We wish you the best on your future adventures. You will be missed.

Five members of the Westerman lab, senior Braden Shipman, and graduate students Grace Hirzel, Matt Murphy, Sushant Potdar, and Yiting Ter, presented their research at a virtual Marine Ecology mini-Symposium April 9th, 2020. Coordinated by Dr. Jenn Dijkstra of the University of New Hampshire, as a way to facilitate research presentations by students who would Read More …

Yiting Ter joined the Westerman Lab in January, 2020, after completing her B.S. in Life Sciences at the National University of Singapore. Yiting conducted her undergraduate research on B. anynana behavioral genetics with Antónia Monteiro, and is looking forward to expanding her behavioral genomics skill set during her PhD. We are delighted to have her Read More …

This year a record number of undergraduates in the Westerman Lab applied for, and were awarded, research fellowships. Braden Shipman received a Arkansas Department of Higher Education SURF (Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship) for his research on the effect of the thermocline on gene expression in invasive ascidians. Abby Merrill received an Honors College Research Grant Read More …

Lab graduate Nikki Robertson’s MSc research on the lack of filial recognition in Bicyclus anynana, “Lack of sibling avoidance during mate selection in the butterfly Bicyclus anynana“ was published in Behavioural Processes today! Congratulations Nikki, and to co-author Tim Sullivan, a former postdoc in the lab, on their hard work! Check out Robertson et al., Read More …

Many congratulations to graduate student Sushant Potdar for receiving a Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) Grants-in-Aid of Research (GIAR) Award, for his proposal “Learning-induced brain gene expression in allopatric morphs of Heliconius melpomene“!

Check out Angel Rivera-Colón et al., Multiple Loci Control Eyespot Number Variation on the Hindwings of Bicyclus anynana butterflies, to learn about the multiple loci implicated in controlling eyespot number in this model butterfly.

Vision papers from the four Reintegrating Biology workshops NSF held in December can now be viewed on-line. Links to these papers are found in NSF’s Bio Buzz blog post Reintegrating Biology Workshop Series Outcomes, as well as at Knowinnovation’s blog post: Biology’s Jupitershots.

Erica had the pleasure of participating in one of NSF’s sponsored Reintegrating Biology workshops in Austin, TX December 2019. It was a wonderful opportunity to brainstorm solutions to current roadblocks in scientific advancement, while meeting biologists from multiple fields and institutions across the US. Stay tuned for thought provoking papers and thought pieces from these Read More …

Congratulations to PhD candidate Grace Hirzel on receiving 2nd place in the student poster presentation competition for the section of Systematics, Evolution, & Biodiversity at the Entomological Society of America, Nov 17-20, St. Louis, MO for her poster entitled “Active and abundant: Seasonal variation in butterfly communities in Arkansas prairies”. Well done!