Congratulations to Matt Wolkoff for earning 1^st place in the Autumn 2023 Delong Award for his oral presentation titled “The cycle gene is essential ​for both circadian rhythmicity and seasonal responses in ​Culex pipiens.​”

Congratulations to Alden Siperstein for defending his thesis on “Studies on biting in Culex mosquitoes.” Alden studied the molecular basis of biting in mosquitoes, when mosquitoes initiate and terminate their overwintering dormancy and seasonal changes in host use.

Congratulations to Lydia Fyie and Matt Wolkoff for their accomplishments in the OSU Department of Entomology’s 2023 Spring Awards. Lydia Fyie was awarded the Susan W. Fisher Teaching Award for her excellent work as a Teaching Assistant. Lydia has been instrumental in redesigning the laboratory portion of the Insect Physiology course at OSU, taught by Dr. Megan Meuti. She spent many hours designing, integrating, and preparing complicated laboratory experiments, demonstrating her love of and talent for teaching. Matt Wolkoff was awarded the Lowell R. “Skip” Nault Research Award for his exceptional work in designing a research system to determine the activity levels of diapausing and non-diapausing mosquitoes using the “Fly Box system.” His paper in this field has already been heavily cited, a testament to the value of his research.

Congratulations to Maria Fiorta for receiving 3^rd place at the Denman in Animal Sciences for her work in “Understanding how light pollution affects mosquito blood-feeding and molecular biology.”

Congratulations to Olivia Bianco on successfully defending her honors thesis and graduating with research distinction! Olivia’s thesis focuses on characterizing whether and how royal jelly, a substance produced by honey bees, might affect seasonal responses in mosquitoes. Olivia was co-advised by Dr. Matthias Klein in Food Science and Technology and used molecular (qRT-PCR and RNA interference), phenotypic measures (egg follicle size, macronutrient stores) and metabolomics. Her dataset is truly impressive and surprising; she found that consuming royal jelly completely reversed the seasonal responses of mosquitoes (e.g. caused mosquitoes reared in summer-like conditions to show winter-like characteristics and caused mosquitoes reared in winter-like conditions to display summer-like characteristics). Olivia is currently preparing her thesis to be submitted soon as first author manuscript to the Journal of Experimental Biology. In the fall she will attend OSU Vet School! Way to go Olivia!!!!

Congratulations to Alden Siperstein on publishing his first paper as a first author in Evolutionary Applications! This study summarizes our findings on mRNA abundance differs between biting and non-biting Culex pipiens mosquitoes. The work was supported by an NIH R21 awarded to Peter Armbruster at Georgetown University, Christine Holzapfel at the University of Oregon and PI Megan. Check out the article here!

Congratulations to Hannah Tronetti, an undergraduate student who successfully defended her research thesis. Hannah will graduate with her B.S. in Animal Sciences and will return home to Pittsburgh before starting Veterinary School (hopefully at OSU!) in the fall of 2022. Hannah’s thesis is entitled “Attempt to Establish Field Colony of Culex restuans to Assess the Urban Heat Island Effect” and can be accessed here.

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.