As part of Anahi Espindola's extension outreach to Spanish-speaking communities, Darsy has published a blog in Spanish on her dissertation subject: lady beetles! Darsy is a Ph.D. student in the Lamp Lab, and studies the population ecology of coccinellids in alfalfa and their movement into adjacent crops. You can find the blog here.
Veronica Yurchak publishes her thesis research on degradation of Bt in post-harvest corn tissue!7/30/2021
We are pleased to have Veronica publish her research on the degradation of Bt proteins in corn residue as affected by post-harvest practices. She performed her research in the Hooks and Dively lab, with contributions by Bill. Our connection with Veronica goes back to her undergraduate years when she took Bill's Freshwater Biology course. Her research demonstrated that Bt proteins maintained biological activity for as long as 24 weeks after harvest when residue was left above the ground, such as found in no-till systems. The article may be found here.
Alina has now published five articles during her postdoctoral stay in our lab with a review to choose an effective PCR-based approach for diet analysis of insect herbivores. A typical process of detection of DNA of ingested plants involves the choice of a DNA extraction method, a genomic target region, and/or the best approach for an accurate plant species identification. This review provides important information on the availability of successfully used PCR-based approaches to identify ingested plant DNA in insect guts, and suggests potential directions for future studies on plant - insect trophic interactions. The article may be found here.
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