Postdoc Jessica Higgins and graduate student Kate Augustine presented posters at UNC’s 2nd annual Women in Science symposium on April 6, 2016. Congrats to Jessica Higgins for winning the postdoc poster competition for her work about “Seasonal variation and Phenotypic Plasticity in a Montane Species of Colias butterfly”.

Graduate student Kate Augustine and fellow student Rebecca Adikes presented a lecture and demonstration entitled “Butterfly wings – why are they so pretty?” using paper microscopes called foldscopes at the Culbreth Middle School Science Day on March 16, 2016. Check back soon for a link to a written lesson plan that they are working on. Below is a cool image of Pieris rapae wing scales taken through a foldscope and an iPhone.

Graduate students Kate Augustine and Elizabeth Moore with the help of undergraduate student Laura Hamon brought the Caterpillar Experiment to Darwin Day at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, NC on February 13th, 2016. This year’s Darwin Day had the highest attendance ever!

Senior Kingsolver lab undergraduate student Laura Hamon had an original piece of art work featured in the Fall 2015 edition of Carolina Scientific. Carolina Scientific is an undergraduate research magazine put together by students at UNC-CH each semester. You can check out Laura’s watercolor accompanying an article about UNC Biology’s Dr. Alan Weakley on pg. 15-16 of the Fall 2015 issue at http://www.carolinascientific.org/. Congrats Laura!

This semester the Kingsolver lab is proud to welcome Dr. Jessica Higgins back to the lab as a 6-12 month postdoctoral research fellow! Jess will be working with Joel collaborating on analysis of RNAseq data collected from Manduca sexta heat shock experiments.

Senior Kingsolver lab undergraduate student Laura Hamon presented her research poster entitled “The effect of temperature on spring appearance date of North Carolina buttterflies” at the BIOL 395H research symposium. Students in their second semester of research showcase their posters in the Genome Science Building lobby for a week concluded by a reception at 2pm on November 20th, 2015. Laura furthered her research into North Carolina butterflies and gained skills using GIS and GitHub by collaborating with Dr. Allen Hurlbert while Dr. Kingsolver was on sabbatical this semester. Way to go Laura!

Congrats to Kingsolver lab undergraduate student Laura Hamon for having her UNC Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow (SURF) project highlighted in UNC’s Endeavors magazine this month. You can learn more about her research with the lab by watching this video!

PI Joel Kingsolver and recent lab graduate Dr. Heidi MacLean traveled to the International Symposium on the Environmental Physiology of Ectoherms and Plants (ISEPEP6) in Aarhus, Denmark August 3-7th, 2015 http://www.ecophys.dk/isepep6/. The conference was a “melting pot” of biological disciplines including contributions from physiologists, molecular biologists, geneticists, and ecologists.  Joel was a keynote speaker and gave a talk titled “Organismal and evolutionary responses of insects to variable and changing climates”.  Heidi also gave a talk titled “Geographic divergence in upper thermal limits across insect life stages: Does behavior matter?”

Recent lab graduates Jessica Higgins, PhD (left) and Heidi MacLean, PhD (right) were hooded by Dr. Kingsolver (center) this weekend at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s 2015 Doctoral Hooding Ceremony in the Dean E. Smith Center on May 9th. Here they are looking smart in their academic finery. Congrats ladies! The lab will miss you.

Heidi MacLean, PhD and graduate students Kate Augustine and Laura Sligar brought the Caterpillar Experiment to the 2015 UNC Science Expo on April 11th where they invited citizen scientists to collect data on the effects of hot and cold temperatures on caterpillar biting rate. Heidi also has been busy this month teaching 6 classes of 2-5 year olds at Epworth Preschool about the Tobacco Hornworm life cycle. Heidi and the kids also made caterpillar art by dipping the wandering caterpillars in non-toxic paint and letting them crawl across paper leaving colorful caterpillar proleg prints wherever they went!