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.