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!
Spread the word, let’s help our collaborators in Puerto Rico!
Project Monkey Island and the International Primatological Society is seeking volunteers for their fourth trip to the Cayo Santiago Biological Station, Caribbean Primate Research Center, in Punta Santiago, Puerto Rico.
The trip is scheduled for January 2-12th, 2019 and has the mission to continue to clean up Cayo Santiago and begin building structures like water collection systems and corrals, as well as planting trees to reforest the island. Volunteers will also contribute to repair the primate center’s offices and various houses, schools, and other structures in Punta Santiago. As Project Monkey Island continue these efforts, this project will serve as a template and proof of concept for Primatologists Without Borders, an entity created within the International Primatological Society to provide intermediate- and long-term relief to facilities and communities associated with nonhuman primates that have been
affected by natural disasters.
Opportunities for shared costs with other volunteers for housing, food, and transportation are available.
For more information on the project, please visit: https://www.projectmonkeyisland.org/index.html
Click here for informational brochure.
Questions: Raisa Hernandez, rhernan2@richmond.edu
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!
The Cayo Santiago Biological Station is an NIH-funded facility of the University of Puerto Rico located in Humacao, Puerto Rico. The station houses over 1,500 free-ranging rhesus macaques. The rhesus macaque population is managed with minimal intervention to support non-invasive research. The capture-released program in Cayo Santiago has produced one of the most extensive demographic datasets for a nonhuman primate in the world, supporting extensive research since 1940’s. During the 2017 hurricane season, the island of Cayo Santiago was hit by Hurricane María, rising concerns regarding the impacts of such perturbation on the viability of the population. We aim at studying the demographic effects of Hurricane María on Cayo Santiago rhesus macaques making inferences on the viability of the population using matrix population models.
Research group: Grayson lab
Term: Summer research
Research focus: Population Ecology
Research objective: To study the demographic effects of Hurricane María on the Cayo Santiago rhesus macaque population
Requirements: We ask students to have a strong interest in quantitative biology and to be comfortable working in R (NO full proficiency required). Students genuinely interested in developing skills in R are welcome to approach us. No field work required.
Contacts: Dr. Kristine Grayson kgrayson@richmond.edu
Dr. Raisa Hernández rhernan2@richmond.edu
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!
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