Those who have worked on the red-backed salamander project in the Grayson Lab know that there are TONS of salamanders in the James River Park. Now the world does too!
We recently published a paper in the Royal Society Open Science journal on the population ecology of our salamanders using spatial mark-recapture techniques. We are looking forward to future papers incorporating our data with data collected from other SPARCnet sites!
In a cross-town collaboration with Dr. Andrew Eckert’s lab at VCU, we are pleased to present to you a paper on the the evolutionary genomics of an insect invasion along a latitudinal gradient in North America!
Back in the summer of 2015 (Dr. Grayson’s 1st summer at UR!) we did a reciprocal transplant experiment at UR and Mountain Lake Biological Station using individuals sourced from the Coastal Plain and the Appalachian Mountains. It was a big endeavor: lots of folks contributed their time and energy to the data collection, analysis, and contextualization of the study. We are so excited to announce that the paper from this project is now officially published in Biological Invasions!
This spring and summer have been very productive for the Grayson Lab! We’ve had three articles published recently with 8 of our undergrads and 5 of our collaborators. We’ve accomplished so much together in the gypsy moth and harlequin bug systems!
Congratulations to Jacqueline Pearlmutter (’17) who received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant grant to work in Brazil in 2018! In the Grayson Lab, Jacqueline worked with Julie Charbonnier from VCU on projects looking at the effects of moisture on juvenile spotted salamanders.
To see the UR press release on Jacqueline’s Fulbright grant click here.
Kristine, Lily, and our VCU undergraduate colleagues Hannah ’18 & Madison ’17 represented the Grayson Lab in Portland, Oregon at the 102nd annual Ecological Society of America Meeting. Hannah & Madison presented our results from the stage-specific heat shock experiment on August 7th (UR Undergraduate coauthors: Nana Banahene ’18 & Salem Salem ’18). Lily presented a talk on our
Madison, Hannah, Kristine, & Lily at ESA 2017 in Portland, OR
research with the red backed salamanders in the James River Park on August 8th (UR Undergraduate coauthors: Sarah Timko ’17 & Christian Law ’17). Kristine wrapped things up with a talk on the Allee slope and Slow-the-Spread gypsy moth management program on August 10th. It was a great meeting! (And concurrent with the 38th annual Footbag Championships!)
We did it! In a collaboration with Salvatore Agosta at VCU and Dylan Parry at SUNY-ESF, we received and Early Career NSF Grant!! The grant, titled: Linking thermal tolerance to invasion dynamics: Climate and physiological capacity as regulators of geographical spread, will help fund projects relating to the physiological tolerance and fitness of gypsy moth populations at the invasion front in North America.
Find some the news releases here: NSF News Release from UR and here: NSF News Release
Congratulations to our very own, Andi Levorse! Andi is the recipient of a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for excellence in math, science, and engineering. Woohoo!
See the University of Richmond cover story here.
Sal Agosta, Carolyn May, Noah Hillerbrand, Eloy Martinez, and Kristine Grayson at VCU learning about the “thermal hut.”
We have just begun a collaboration with Salvatore Agosta (VCU) and Eloy Martinez (Guánica State Forest, Puerto Rico) to study the metabolism of gypsy moths from different populations reared at different acclimation temperatures. This past weekend UR students, Carolyn May and Noah Hillerbrand, along with Trevor Faske (VCU), Lily Thompson, and Kristine met up with Eloy & Sal at VCU to learn about the respirometry equipment and test out the machine for research in March and April. Thanks for coming all the way from Puerto Rico to help us out Eloy!
Kristine hosted Dr. Caitlin Gabor from Texas State University for a seminar at the University of Richmond on Monday, February 22, 2016. The talk was titled, “Does disease mediate increased stress or stress mediate increased disease in amphibians?” Kristine & Caitlin collaborated over the summer on an Eastern red spotted newt density project at Mountain Lake Biological Station. Thanks for visiting, Dr. Gabor!
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