We had a great group in the lab this fall and we made a good start on several projects.

Christina and Jacqueline took the lead on testing lots of different methods that will ultimately help us test whether the same milkweed genotypes that tolerate clipping also tolerate aphid herbivory.  Turns out, our milkweed plants were highly tolerant!  But, there were some aphid species that did affect milkweed growth, even as the aphids died out.  This wasn’t what we initially expected.  Could we be seeing a cost to some kind of induced plant resistance?

Jenny created a lab on aphid plasticity in wing development that I used in Invertebrate Biology over interim. Grant and I keep plugging away on a model of plant defense; I presented our latest results at the Entomology Meetings this year. Tyler helped us all and gave us good feedback along the way.