Undergraduate Mentoring

Interested in joining our lab?  I am always looking for interested and self-motivated undergraduates to help out around the lab.  I ask a minimum of 5 hours per week for volunteering students; and after a semester students can conduct research for course credit – something that requires a more substantial time commitment.

Past undergraduates:

Kristin Linesch.  Kristin has spent the last 6 months loading and analyzing video-taped behavioral interactions of spawning horseshoe crabs.  We are examining the hypothesis that males exhibit copulatory courtship behavior like that seen in many insect species.  Kristin will graduate in Spring of 2011

Connor Burnside.  In the fall of 2010 Connor began working on a large project that I have with 5 other collaborators that examines the effects of functional traits on regeneration in axolotls.  Connor worked with me to photograph and digitally quantify re-growing limbs.  He now spends his days in the Maden lab analyzing histological slides of our dissected limbs.

Kim Barbeitos.  Kim has been working on various horseshoe crab  projects since joining the lab in 2008.  She began working with Drs. Brockmann and Johnson on their project regarding the evolution of polyandry.  She also worked with me to test an important assumption of the resource division hypothesis to explain the evolution and maintenance of sexual size dimorphism.

Hunter Schrank.  Since fall 2008, Hunter (along with Jane Brockmann), has conducted a nice study to examine rates of food intake and excretion in 3 categories of wild-caught horseshoe crabs. Initial results show that females and satellite males excrete more waste than do attached males. We followed up those results using Stable Isotopes to detect nutritional stress in attached males.

Tony Nguyen.  Tony assisted Kathleen with experiments on accessory glands in crickets. He also entered data, measured horseshoe crab molts, and used software to extract morphology from photos. He designed & conducted an independent research project (spring 09) on behavioral interactions of spawning horseshoe crabs.

Vanessa Schipani. Vanessa worked on various horseshoe crab projects including a project correlating the intensity of female mating scars to the condition of females.  This will further help us to approximate age and condition of females in the field, and will be written up as a note in the next year .  She went on to work as a field assistant for Colorado State University.

Kathleen Colby.  From 2007-08 Kathleen conducted research for her senior thesis that examined how density influences the development of Male Accessory Glands in crickets (one manuscript is in prep, one is in review).  Kathleen will begin a DVM program at the UF veterinary school in fall ‘08.

Holly Smith.  Holly began working in the lab in fall ‘07 on various cricket projects, including examining how food quality affects MAG size. She is looking forward to other research assistantships and science education positions after graduation in summer ‘08.

Jae Lee.  Jae also worked on various cricket projects.  She caught animals in the field and helped to raise them in the lab.  She was especially interested in nutrition, and has subsequently began pharmacy school at Nova Southeastern University after graduation in summer ’08.