Current Lab Happenings
We are so excited to kick off the new academic year with so many new faces! This quarter we are welcoming PhD student PJ Jones and Post-doc Erica Sarro Gustilo to the lab! We also have two amazing new undergrad students, Leo Couchon and Iris Miller-Sherman joining us. Welcome everyone!
Thanks to everyone who participated in our Integrating Theory and Data in Plant-Pollinator Interactions workshop held at RMBL last week! Berry instructed this workshop alongside several of our NSF collaborators (Dr. Fernanda Valdovinos, Dr. Mark Novak, Dr. Ian Breckheimer, and Dr. Taranjot Kaur) and the event was a great success. Participants spent 3 days in the Rocky Mountains exploring the theory of network structure, the statistical methods for model fitting, and the mathematical tools that enable inferences regarding community dynamics.
Congratulations to Chris and Berry for their new paper! The paper titled “The Interplay of Binary and Quantitative Structure on the Stability of Mutualistic Networks” is out now in the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology. Check it out at this link!
This week the lab hosted a very successful Biology Coffee Hour featuring a variety of homemade treats, coffee, and community building! Each week, a different lab is in charge of hosting coffee hour in the department. It was a beautiful sunny day to catch up on the LSB deck (and hopefully the first of many sunny and warm coffee hours to come).
We are happy to advertise that the lab has acquired new shared-use microscope equipment available for use by any UW student, faculty, or staff member! This includes a dissecting microscope, compound microscope, and a high-quality color camera fittable to both. Berry, Madeleine, and Manogya (along with other department members) applied for and were awarded this equipment through the UW Student Technology Fund. We are incredibly excited to use these microscopes and camera to improve our insect ID and help train new lab members!