College of the Environment

Do Natural Enemies Impose Selection on Herbivore Diet Breadth?

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Live Poster Session: Zoom LinkThursday, July 30th 1:15-2:30pm EDT Abstract: Bernays and Graham proposed the “Enemy-Free Space” hypothesis in the paper “On the Evolution of Host Specificity in Phytophagous Arthropods” in 1988. They hypothesized that traits associated with dietary specialization would allow herbivores to better escape generalist enemies, and thus generalist enemies would select for … Read more

Numbers for Nature: An International Perspective on Conservation Economics through Conservation Strategy Fund

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Live Poster Session: Zoom LinkThursday, July 30th 1:15-2:30pm EDT Abstract: Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF) is an environmental non-profit that uses conservation economics to preserve natural ecosystems, promote sustainable development, and protect human well-being. Although my summer with CSF did not entail research in the traditional sense, I executed four projects that gave me invaluable experience … Read more

Complex influences on plant development: the interaction of genotype, environment, and parent environment

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Live Poster Session: Zoom LinkThursday, July 30th 1:15-2:30pm EDT Abstract: Until recently, biologists considered the traits of an individual organism to be determined entirely by its genotype and its environment. However, new findings have shown that the parents’ environment can also influence an organism’s development via inherited regulatory factors. In an ongoing, large-scale greenhouse growth … Read more

Increased temperatures alter the postlarval American lobster transcriptome: the challenge of balancing cellular stress response and homeostasis

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Live Poster Session: Zoom LinkThursday, July 30th 1:15-2:30pm EDT Abstract: Transcriptomics reveals how abiotic and biotic factors influence the portion of the genome being transcribed from DNA into RNA, and is a useful tool to understand the impacts of climate change on marine organisms at a molecular level. We utilize transcriptomics to uncover the molecular … Read more

Determining the Recombination Rates of Solar Cell Materials

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Live Poster Session: Zoom LinkThursday, July 30th 1:15-2:30pm EDT Abstract: A major goal in the field of solar technology is to find semiconductors that can be used to make solar panels that are cheaper or more efficient than solar panels on the market. One of the properties of a material that indicates whether the semiconductor … Read more

Investigating the Stability of the LigAB Dimer Interface with Molecular Dynamics Simulations

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Live Poster Session: Zoom LinkThursday, July 30th 1:15-2:30pm EDT Abstract: Protein dimerization has been shown to play an integral role in many biological functions, from regulation of cellular mechanisms to forming important enzymatic structures. The enzyme LigAB is a homodimer of heterodimers of which the active site is located at the heterodimeric interface. In previous … Read more