Patrick GeroI am a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois. I am primarily interested in insect phylogenomics and speciation. As an undergrad I worked on the systematics of a species complex of cicadas with Dr. Chris Simon and am now involved in radiation of Hawaiian bark lice and the Tree of Life project for the insect superorder Paraneoptera with Dr. Kevin Johnson.
Erin AllmannI am basically enamored with diseases, especially those spread by vector. I am a first year PhD student at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in the Entomology department. My research interests are disease ecology and epidemiology, and the connections and relationships between the two. My project in Panama will focus on Chagas Disease as a study system, looking at the ecology of the vectors and the risk factors associated with Chagas disease across a land use gradient.
Ignacia HolmesIgnacia is a PhD candidate in Biology with Dr. Catherine Potvin. Her research explores alternative ways to reconcile carbon sequestration and forest conservation with local livelihoods, with a focus on local and indigenous communities of Latin America.
Jennifer JonesI'm a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois in the Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology. I am interested in fungal and plant ecology. I will be studying fungi that decompose submerged wood. My main research question involves exploring how differences in wood nutrients and structural characteristics influence the fungal communities that decompose them.
Timothy ThurmanI’m a first-year PhD student in the STRI-NEO program at McGill University. I received my BA in Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology from Vanderbilt University, then spent time working as a research assistant at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. I’m interested in combining field work with genomics to understand how natural selection and adaptation occur at the genetic level. In Panama I’ll do this by studying how the caterpillars of Heliconius butterflies adapt to various ecological conditions.
Salvatore AnzaldoI am a first year Evolutionary Biology Ph.D. student from Arizona State University Receiving my B.S. at Penn State in Biology and Entomology in 2013, my background is in insect morphology and evolution. In Panama I will be studying a group of weevils (subfamily Conoderinae) that contain several underexplored mimicry complexes, notably weevils that mimic fast-flying flies. This mimicry has been described as evasive Mullerian mimicry that has evolved in this group independently multiple times. I will be trying to investigate factors that lead to the origin of this type of mimicry as well as collecting specimens to perform future taxonomic studies on.
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Nathan SmithI am a first year PhD student interested in studying the evolution of behaviors, their adaptive value, and the environmental or social factors that evoke their expression. I am also interested in studying how organisms extract information from the environment, and incorporate it in the decision-making process. I want to examine the extent to which social behaviors are adaptations in response to evolutionary pressures, and to determine how plastic these social responses are. I received a BS in Biology with a minor in Anthropology from Juniata College in 2013. As an undergraduate I studied site restoration following mortality of an invasive allelopathic tree species with Dr. Norris muth, tested a method for mapping DNA damage on the genomic scale under Dr. Peter Dedon at MIT, and analyzed the mechanism of retrotransposition in Saccharomyces cerevisiae for my honors thesis with Dr. Jill Keeney.
Javier MateoJavier Mateo-Vega is a PhD student in Prof. Catherine Potvin’s Neotropical Ecology Lab at McGill University. His research interests lie in understanding the forces and trade-offs that drive and constrain forest conservation and other land-uses in complex multicultural and multifunctional landscapes in the tropics. He is using eastern Panama as a model site and case study. His work aims to contribute to the body of knowledge that informs how to manage complex social-ecological systems sustainably.
Rachel MoranI am a first year PhD student in Dr. Becky Fuller’s lab in the Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I am interested in sexual selection, speciation, and the evolution of mating systems and color patterns in fish. In Dr. Fuller's lab my research will focus on examining species delineation and the problem of allopatry in darters in the genus Etheostoma, the most speciose genus of North American fish. To do this I will measure genetic distance, geographic distance, color differences, and morphological differences between populations within species in attempt to use these variables to predict the extent of reproductive isolation between groups.
Halie RandoI am a first-year student in Anna Kukekova's lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I'm interested in the mammalian stress response and especially in genetic contributions to psychological resilience to stress. At UIUC I work on bioinformatics and genomics in the domesticated silver fox, which is an excellent model for changes in the stress response. I'm currently working on refinement and chromosome assembly of the fox genome.
Kathryn Solórzano LowellI am a PhD student in the labs of Dr. Jim Dalling and Dr. Katy Heath in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. I also work closely with the mycologist Dr. Astrid Ferrer. In Panama, I will study interactions between bacteria and wood decomposing aquatic fungi. Broadly, I am interested in mutualisms, their evolution, and their ecological consequences. I am very happy to have the opportunity to study and conduct research here at STRI.
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