Dr. Jennina Taylor-Wells of Oxford Brookes University in the UK will be joining Dr. Jeff Bloomquist's lab as a postdoc this month.

Dr. Thomas Chouvenc in the ESA news said, “We hope that the consortium approach could be a model for a scientific community to tackle taxonomic hard cases as a group rather than as dueling researchers. We believe that the consensus reached by the consortium may serve as a road map to provide a strong incentive to solve controversies within the Coptotermes genus in a foreseeable timeframe, and ultimately this approach could be applied to other important insect genera.”

Read more at: Revisiting Coptotermes (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae): a global taxonomic road map for species validity and distribution of an economically important subterranean termite genus

Winner of the Departmental Mulrennan Award for best thesis in the department in 2015: Tyler Vitone - From pavement to population genomics: citizen science and ddRADseq partner to characterize the introduced pavement ant, Tetramorium caespitum, and enhance student engagement with science. Chair Dr. Andrea Lucky.

Winner of the Mulrennan Award as best dissertation in the Department in 2015: Dr. Yao (Juliana) Xu - Biological studies on the gut symbiont Burkholderia associated with Blissus insularis (Hemiptera: Blissidae). Chair: Dr. Drion Boucias and co-chair: Dr. Eileen Buss.

Departmental nomination to present a paper at the 3rd Annual Statewide Graduate Student Research Symposium to be hosted by UF on April 22nd, 2016. Denis Willett - Agricultural and ecological implications of interspecific social behavioral plasticity in entomopathogenic nematodes. Chair Dr. Lukasz Stelinski.

ABOVE: Our fall 2015 doctoral graduates (in blue) with our Graduate Coordinator (in black). From left to right Dr. Caroline Efstathion, Dr. Garima Kakkar, Dr. Heather McAuslane and Dr. Yao "Juliana" Xu.

Lauren Cirino has been awarded the Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid to support her research project entitled “Effects of male quality and territory quality on female mate choice.” Lauren works with leaf-footed cactus bugs, Narnia femorata, in Dr. Christine Miller’s evolutionary ecology lab.

“The Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research (GIAR) program has provided undergraduate and graduate students with valuable educational experiences since 1922. By encouraging close working relationships between students and mentors, the program promotes scientific excellence and achievement through hands-on learning.”

Vanessa Simoes Dias de Castro, a Ph.D. candidate in Entomology, along with 16 other participants are organizing the first Brazilian Graduate Students Conference (BRASCON) at Harvard University on March 12th and 13th, 2016. The BRASCON promotes activities to enable integration, communication, and professional development for Brazilian graduate students in the United States within the research fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).  Registration is now open and abstract submission is due by February 15th 2016. Online registration and submission: www.brasconference.org/en. See the Meetings and Presentations section below for a full color advertisement for BRASCON.

From the Outreach Coordinator

A big thank you to the students and faculty who volunteered for our December outreach events.

• December 4th- La Petite day care- Michael Gonzalez
• December 4th- YOPP Inc. science days collaboration with NRDI- Deepak Shrestha and Erin Powell
• December 7th- Glen Springs Elementary 3rd grade class- Dr. Marc Branham and Erin Powell
• December 21st- La Petite day care- Michael Gonzalez

Upcoming Events-

• 30 January- Morningside Nature Center
• 1 February- CPET Tour
• 3 February- Marion Environmental science class tour
• 4-15 February- Florida State Fair
• 13 February- Buc Toucs at Camp Shands

ABOVE: Michael Gonzalez presents to pre-schoolers at La Petite day care as part of our outreach activities.

The live critters are always a hit with children and adults alike. The critters are available for you to check out should you be leading an outreach event. We have doubles of our most popular critters, as well as various native insect species depending on the time of year. We have large wood and Plexiglas cages for viewing our native orb weaving spiders. There is one travel cage and one larger static cage. Please be sure to contact us and review the protocol on transporting and handling the critters if you are not already familiar with it. If you lead an outreach, be sure to fill out a documentation form so your event can be included in the newsletter and we can log all outreach events.