As the days continue to grow shorter and the air takes on the crisp chill of autumn, let's flash back to the warm days of summer, when EcoGSA members were busy with field work! Let's take a look at what one of our members, Emma Waltman, spent her days doing. Emma is a third-year PhD student co-advised by Anne Nielsen and Julie Lockwood. Her research is concerned with the effect of landscape variables on enemy-associated egg mortality of stink bugs. To do this, she spent June through August deploying egg masses of two different species, the invasive brown marmorated stink bug and the beneficial spined soldier bug, at different peach orchards. At the end of the summer, she assessed the fate of the eggs. Specifically, she examined whether the eggs had been predated or parasitized by parasitoid wasps. The farms vary widely in the features of the landscape that surrounds them, which may affect the mortality levels. In addition, she was examining differences in the associated parasitoids for each stink bug host species. Comments are closed.
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We seek to further the social, cultural, academic and research interests of the students in the graduate program in Ecology and Evolution and act as a link between the graduate students and the faculty. Archives
May 2024
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