Congrats to Alexandra Stellwagen, who was awarded the Junior Research Award at the 2025 Biology Awards Ceremony! Alexandra was recognized for her outstanding academic achievement and her research in the Erickson lab that combines her CS and Biology majors. Alexandra has learned to analyze transcriptome and population genomic data in the past year and will be using her CS skills in a health research setting in an internship at St. Jude this summer. Congrats Alexandra!

Congrats to lab alum Camille Walsh-Antzak, whose honors thesis was published in the journal Ecology and Evolution!

Invasive species may succeed in new environments in part because they are less susceptible to diseases and parasites that have co-evolved with local hosts, giving invaders a competitive advantage. We tested this hypothesis by competing an invasive fruit fly against established species in the presence of parasitoid wasps that lay their eggs in fruit fly larvae. We found that the invasive species generally outcompeted other species in the presence of parasitoids, but the extent of its advantage depended on the species it was competing against and the number of larvae present.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.70754

Weston, Logan, Christine, Ansleigh, Jerry, Sam, Jillian, and Camille all contributed their expertise to our huge study of rapid phenotypic evolution in Z. indianus. We found that flies evolve smaller wings within a few generations of invading new environments, and other phenotypic changes also occur.  These findings suggest that the species can evolve rapidly, which could fuel future invasions and pest potential. Check out our work here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.15.623845v1

Our work on population genomics of invasive Z. indianus populations in North America is now available on BioRxiv! UR undergraduate Ansleigh Gunter (pictured at left) contributed to some of the analyses in this paper. Check it out here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.20.614190v1

Read about what members of the Erickson lab have been up to this summer  on the URNow website!

Congrats to Camille, who just published her honors thesis work on BioRxiv! Read more about her work on how Z. indianus may get a boost by avoiding parasitoid wasps here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.09.602257v1

Jillian, Camille, Ansleigh and Michelle graduated as members of the class of 2024 this week--congrats on all of your accomplishments!

Four students from the Erickson lab presented their research at SEPEEG 2023.  Congratulations to Ansleigh, Michelle, Camille, and Jerry for all their hard work and their wonderful presentations!