Trop Bio Lab

10/25/2021

Trop Bio Lab's Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy is interviewed in the final episode of the first saeason of the Animal Behavior Podcast. Floria talks about the ecology and evolution of social insects, and diversifying STEM.

Episode Summary: In this episode, Amy speaks with Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy (), a Research Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Biology at the University of Rochester.They discuss the selection pre...

06/08/2021

Do you like podcasts? Here's a recommendation for those wanting to hear more about amazing research in Animal Behavior .... the first season has a great line-up, including TropBioLab's Dr. Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy!!

https://twitter.com/AnimalBehavPod/status/1402273730433273858/photo/1

05/26/2021

Former TropBioLab grad student Sarah Cowles's final chapter is out: In this collaborative work with Brian Weeks from U of Michigan, and Nancy Chen and Lindsey Perrin of U of Rochester, we found that two Solomon Island endemic birds are at genetic risk despite having large census population size. The genetic risk is due to a recent contraction in population size. Sarah Alison Cowles

(2021). Comparison of adult census size and effective population size support the need for continued protection of two Solomon Island endemics. Emu - Austral Ornithology. Ahead of Print.

05/05/2021

With support from the Constable Foundation, we provided scholarships to each and every student from the communities involved in setting up the Yato Conservation Area (Makira, Solomon Islands). Tangible benefits like these allow us to move forward with our partnership despite travel restrictions during the pandemic. The Yato project is also sponsored by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund #

04/30/2021

's Entomologist-extraordinaire is giving a talk for .of.Rochester chapter of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science () ... about bugs, biology and broadening participation in science.

“Thanks to ! Looking forward to my talk (May 6 at 1 pm ET). More info 👇🏽👇🏽 https://t.co/343ZiDFjL1”

04/24/2021

Congratulations to TropBioLab graduate student María Isabel Castano for receiving an American Ornithological Society student research grant. We're excited to see what the results of the proposed work on hybrid zones in Colombian tanagers can tell us about the origin of species!

“Thrilled to have been selected for the Student Research Awards 2021. Excited to go back to the field in Colombia this summer and start my research at ! Thanks to AOS for supporting my project 🦜 📸by: ”

03/05/2021

Flo is excited to be part of a collaborative effort (and the bug person!), where we discuss how brood parasites are neither predators or trophic parasites. Check out our new paper in Trends in Parasitology!

Brood parasitism is the introduction of unrelated progeny into the nest or colony of a host that then raises the foreign young. This reproductive stra…

03/03/2021

What happens to animal brains during and after aggressive interactions? Very excited to share work by Floria with collaborators from the Sheehan lab at Cornell University. We found strong neurogenomic responses in wasps, after social interactions and the establishment of dominance. Winners and losers initially showed similar gene expression at the end of an interaction. But after 4 hours, losers showed changes in expression levels of genes associated to early changes in social status such as aggression, worker-like behavior and reproduction.

Social interactions have large effects on individual physiology and fitness. In the immediate sense, social stimuli are often highly salient and engaging. Over longer time scales, competitive interactions often lead to distinct social ranks and differences in physiology and behavior. Understanding h...

02/19/2021

Super proud of undergrad Peter Aronson for submitting his manuscript! As an independent project in our National Science Foundation (NSF) - funded Solomon Islands course, Peter explored how logging and human settlements affect coral reef communities, finding different species responded uniquely to different pollutants

01/20/2021

wasp social parasite and its host show differential investment in sensory brain regions! Check out our new preprint by former undergrad researcher & with , , K Gandia, T Lopreto & R Cervo

Obligate social parasites evolve traits to effectively locate and then exploit their hosts, whereas hosts have complex social behavioral repertoires, which include sensory recognition to reject potential conspecific intruders and heterospecific parasites. While social parasite and host behaviors hav...

12/23/2020

decorations… done! Wishing everyone safe and healthy holidays!

Decoraciones del lab…. listas! ¡Les deseamos unas felices fiestas y mucha salud!

12/03/2020

In this Research Topic, we will explore the general question of why patterns that range from collective action to cooperation may evolve among non-kin, and how the various potential drivers of these behaviors intersect with the diversity of non-kin social systems in invertebrates. We suggest that no...