We are pleased to welcome Ms. Hannah Dehus as the new laboratory manager and technician! Hannah graduated with her B.S. in Biology and a minor in Entomology from OSU. She has worked for Clarke Mosquito Control and provides extensive expertise on mosquito identification, surveillance/trapping and biology. Hannah will be assisting Graduate Student Alden with field studies to determine when mosquitoes enter and exit diapause in the field and will be designing her own experiments. We are so thrilled that she will be joining us! 🙂

Today we hosted the inaugural Ohio Regional Tick Symposium. This event was lead by Dr. Sarah Short, and co-organized by PI Megan and Dr. Risa Pesapane (OSU College of Veterinary Preventative Medicine), Dr. Carol Anelli (OSU Entomology), Dr. Tim McDermott (OSU Extension), as well as Rick Shafer and Katie McAfee in the Infectious Diseases Institute. This event brought together over 80 participants from academia, industry, public health, and other government agencies and stakeholders. The event featured both research talks as well as breakout sessions to determine how we can best combat the burgeoning threat of tick borne disease in Ohio.  For meeting details and more information, please click this link.

Today we celebrated the arrival of new graduate students, Aron Oliveras to the Meuti Lab, and Nikki Joseph to the Short Lab with a joint picnic. To the right is our own Christiana Arkorful-Bondzie holding a growing baby Mark!

This summer PI Megan led two week-long “Bug Camps” as part of the Broader Impacts activities on her NSF grant. These camps were run in collaboration with the PAST Foundation (link here!) and provided opportunities for 12 middle school boys and ~35 inner-city elementary school students to learn about the diversity of insects and other arthropods in our own backyard, how to collect, pin and preserve insects, as well as the ecosystem services that insects provide. A tremendous thanks to Lydia Fyie, Matt Wolkoff, Lucas Sarko and Alden Siperstein for their assistance in making these camps a success.

Congratulations to Caitlin and Joe! Caitlin successfully defended her Master’s thesis. She is moving to Memphis, Tennessee to conduct insect education and outreach with AmeriCorps and also teach online courses.  Caitlin also successfully published the literature review chapter of her Master’s Thesis in the Journal of Medical Entomology (link here). To the left is a picture of Master Peffers holding the newest member of the Meuti Lab, PI Megan’s infant son Mark Andrew Nicol. 🙂

Joe Urso successfully defended his undergraduate research thesis, which focused on characterizing the role of genes within the male accessory glands that are differentially expressed in response to seasonal cues. You can check out his thesis here. Joe is taking a gap year before applying to medical school.

This year the Meuti Lab cleaned up! At the CFAES Research Forum Christiana Arkorful-Bondzie placed 3rd, Joe Urso placed 2nd and Olivia Bianco placed 1st in the Undergraduate Entomology category for the work that they presented as posters. Graduate Student Lydia Fyie placed 1st in the PhD Category!

Then, Joe Urso placed 3rd at the Denman Undergraduate Research Forum in the Animal and Insect Sciences Category.

If that wasn’t enough, Lucas Sarko, Hannah Tronetti and Christiana Arkorful-Bondzie received prestigious Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship (URAP) awards. These fellowships will support the students as they pursue their independent research this summer. Congratulations to everyone on a job exceptionally well done!

Today members of the lab surprised PI Megan with a basket of gifts for the upcoming arrival of her third child! This was very much appreciated by Megan, her husband Matt, and older kids Madeleine and Luke, and was completely unexpected! The event featured a social Zoom call where we were finally able to get a group picture of most of us. 🙂

We are very pleased to announce 2 new publications, both appearing in the Journal of Insect Physiology!

Derek Huck’s paper describes the effect of nutrition on the reproductive physiology of mosquitoes. He found that males that consumed a low-sugar diet had less fat, altered metabolites and fathered fewer offspring than males that consumed moderate and high sucrose diets. Here is a link to read more! 

Lydia Fyie’s paper describes the impact that light pollution might have on seasonal responses in mosquitoes. Specifically, Lydia’s work shows that exposing mosquitoes to short days and artificial night at night in the lab causes them to avert their overwintering dormancy, and instead bite and lay eggs. Check it out here!

Congratulations to Derek and Lydia on what is likely going to be their first of many first-authored papers! 🙂

We are very pleased to announce the addition of our newest lab member! Catherine Durkin is a Sophomore Honors student majoring in Molecular Genetics and plans to attend medical school. She is excited to pursue research that is medically-relevant, and will hopefully assist in establishing transgenic mosquitoes that do not express circadian clock genes.

Undergraduate students Sydney Robare and Lucas Sarko have recently joined the Meuti lab. They are working with graduate student Alden Siperstein to determine when local mosquito species enter their overwintering dormancy in the fall and when they terminate it in the spring. Welcome Sydney and Lucas!