Work on aphid-symbiont-ladybird beetle interactions by former postdoc Jen Kovacs (now at Spelman College) and former undergrad Kelly Costopoulos (now attending medical school) was featured in Entomology Today.

Congratulations to Greg Fricker for receiving highest honors for his undergraduate honors thesis. The many late nights dissecting bugs, which still continue, have paid off.

Justine Garcia defended her Ph.D. thesis today. She gave an excellent talk and then ate pizza and cake. Overall, a pretty good day. Thanks to her family for coming to celebrate.

What she once may have seen as a never ending story is coming to an end. Congratulations!

The Gerardo lab participated in the second annual Atlanta Science Festival this weekend. At the expo, members of the lab cultured 400 plates of Luria Broth agar with members of the Atlanta community. Participants swabbed hands, ear, noses, cell phones and the bottoms of their shoes. Check out mycrobes.org to see what grows.

Graduate student Justine Garcia participated in the University of Michigan’s Early Career Scientists Symposium last weekend. The invitation to speak was quite an honor. Meghan Duffy (U. Mich) sent this picture from the audience.

by Nicole Gerardo

I was fortunate enough to get invited to the University of Arizona to give a talk at the Center of Insect Science along with several other former postdocs of PERT, the Center’s NIH IRACDA postdoctoral program. Other former postdocs in attendance were Alex Wilson, Luciano Matkzin, Jeff Riffell and Armin Moczek

Molly Hunter, Nicole Gerardo, Alex Wilson and Armin Moczek

. What an amazing evening of science!

Congratulations to Stephanie Chiang (now Stephanie Birnbaum), our former lab tech, for her recent marriage to Jeffrey. 

by Nicole Gerardo

This year’s Art-Science-Study-System-Secret-Santa-(and ice cream)-Social-(with)-Soup (ASSSSSSS) was a great success. Members of the Gerardo, De Roode, Hickman, Morran and labs drew names of a hat, and then each person made a gift based on their person’s study organism. I got a deck of cards with all of my lab’s insects (microbes included). Greg, an undergrad in the Gerardo lab, received some clay squash bugs — pumpkins and acorn squash with six legs. Gifts were knit, baked and painted.

Happy ASSSSSSS-mas.

The Gerardo lab is sad to announce that after a three-year hold on the PBEE Vegetarian Chili Cook-Off trophy, the title of Vegetarian Chili King/Queen was handed off to Levi Morran for his “Turtle Power” chili. We are trying to determine if he included any turtle (mutant or otherwise) in his recipe, which would force him to relinquish the throne.

We will be back!

By Nicole Gerardo

The Gerardo Lab is providing photographs for an upcoming exhibit at Cornell University on symbiosis. Photos to be included are of the squash bug, Anasa tristis (taken by Greg Fricker) and of the gut crypt where bugs store bacteria (taken by Justine Garcia).

More information on the upcoming exhibit can be found at:

Art in Unseen Partnerships: The Beauty of Small Things