Say YES to the host

In Spring 2019 Mason Ward conducted a research project in our lab as part of the Freshman Research in Plant Science (FRIPS) program at Mizzou. Mason's project explored whether plant water availability indirectly affects parasitic wasps by changing the quality of the aphid host. If aphids varied in their quality under these conditions we predicted wasps would be less likely to sting poor quality hosts, and/or they would have reduced larval survival and emergence success. He tested this by recording the interactions of wasps and aphids on host plants experiencing a range of water availability. Each trial was 4 hours long, and he recorded 15 of them and analyzed all of the videos during his spring semester!

Mason entered the Life Sciences Week Undergraduate Poster Competition to present some really awesome (and surprising!) results. All of his hard work paid off, and Mason was awarded 3rd place with 80 students competing! Typically, Freshman do not place in the competition because their research projects are in the early stages compared to the Junior and Senior students, but Mason's enthusiasm about his work helped him defy the odds!

If you want to know more about this project, I will be presenting some of this data at the 2019 EntSoc Annual Meeting. Also, keep an eye out for this up and coming entomologist! He is going places.

I'm now a NIFA Predoctoral Fellow!

I am really excited to have the opportunity to continue my research on aphid and parasitic wasp interactions under drought conditions! To learn more about my proposal, check out the project summary below.

Climate change is increasing drought events globally, and while we know that drought affects plant growth and crop production, it is unclear how drought affects insect populations. Herbivorous insects may be affected directly through changes in plant quality, or indirectly by influencing their interactions with the natural enemies that consume them. Aphids are major pests of agricultural systems, and parasitic wasps are very effective at suppressing aphid populations. The wasp lays an egg in the body of the aphid, consumes it from the inside as a larva, and eventually develops into an adult wasp that will parasitize a hundred more aphids. The objectives of my proposal are to determine if plant water availability affects the ability of the wasp to locate aphids, wasp acceptance of aphid hosts for egg laying, and the development of the wasp within the aphid host.

Welcome to my blog!

Stay tuned for updates on my research and general musings about life as a graduate student.