art-science-santa

Posted on by

Monarchs and Football at ASSSSSS-mas squash bugsby 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.

Mycrobes

Posted on by

Microbes are everywhere and are critical for the health of all living organisms, including humans.  To expose people to the microbial world around them, We developed mycrobes.org, a website where people can watch the beautiful forms of growing bacteria and fungi that they have cultured themselves. We would be happy to come to your school or group to culture microbes and to discuss the importance of microbes in the systems that we study.

the end of a dynasty

Posted on by

turtleThe 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!

two commentaries, two perspectives

Posted on by

by Nicole Gerardo

Members (and former members) of the Gerardo Lab have recently published two commentaries related to symbiosis.

Ben Parker and I wrote a piece for a symbiosis-centric of issue of Current Opinions in Insect Science on the mechanisms underlying symbiont-conferred protection. While focusing on systems in which insects are protected by microbes against pathogens and parasites and systems in which insects are less able to vector pathogens and parasites when the vectors harbor particular symbionts, the principles apply to non-insect systems as well. From an ecological perspective, symbiont-conferred protection is akin to forms of direct competition. Symbionts can directly harm the invader through production of toxins, may compete with the invader for resources, or may alter the host immune systems such that it hampers the persistence of the invader.

Justine Garcia developed a review piece that she originally wrote as part of her graduate qualifying exam onto a commentary on the need to consider the ecological and evolutionary underpinnings of symbiosis from the perspective of the symbiont. What are the costs and benefits of host association for the symbiont? This is particularly informative for environmentally acquired symbionts where the microbes can persist in non-host environments. The articles is available in Frontiers in Microbiology.

 

insect science at tea time

Posted on by

by Nicole Gerardo

Last week, I had the opportunity to see Alice Laughton (former postdoc in the lab) and Ben Parker (former grad student) at the European Congress of Entomology in York, England. Yes, it was good to catch up. Yes, it was great to see the development of their scientific pursuits. But, really, the best part was scones and tea with two friends. Alice, sorry to put the butter or before the jam. I will get it right next time (maybe).

Ben is now an NSF-funded postdoc in Charles Godfray’s group at Oxford.

Alice is a postdoc in Rob Knell’s group at Queen Mary University of London.

my exposure to citizen science

Posted on by

by Itai Doron

While there has always been an innate emphasis on researchers to engage the scientific community through publications and research proposals, a experimental method known as citizen science is leading to newfound emphasis on the scientific community’s engagement with the public. It is typically utilized by providing citizens of a certain locality with instructions for data collection. As I continue to explore graduate programs with a focus on the microbiome and microbial ecology, I have been struck by the number of faculty members involved in citizen science. Several collaborations, such as the Wildlife of Our Homes, connect labs (and their local communities) from across the country.

One of my own exposures to citizen science was with the Gerardo lab through the Atlanta Science Festival. At this event, we  premiered the website mycrobes.org. Visitors of our booth were provided a plate with bacterial medium and allowed to inoculate it with a body surface or anything else in their environment. Pictures were taken daily for a week and uploaded to the website. Not only is the website still available, but certain members of the lab are working on updating the website and data collection methods for integration into the biology curricula of local Atlanta schools.

Although the importance of generating interest among science outsiders and kids in society cannot be understated, the integration of citizen science also benefits the scientific community, especially among researchers focused on certain microbial symbionts and the microbiome. Research like the projects undertaken by our lab have become possible due to our improving ability to collect and sort large volumes of data from an environment, but this sort of inquiry only results in significant findings if we can find trends in data across many individuals or across multiple environments. Insect collection, for example, could present this problem, especially if the insect of interest is associated with multiple habitats. The utilization of resident insect collectors across these habitats would save us time in the experimental process.

I certainly look forward to future involvement in citizen science during the remainder of my undergraduate career and beyond.