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Archives: Team

ANDREW GLOSS

Our lab studies the physiological, biochemical, and genetic/genomic basis of adaptations enabling insects to feed on and parasitize plants. We are especially interested in how insects overcome toxic defensive molecules (natural insecticides!) that plants produce for self-defense. For more information, see our lab website.

SHAYLA SALZMAN

The Salzman Lab studies the ecology, evolution, and mechanisms that give rise to and maintain species interactions. Our research takes an interdisciplinary approach- spanning the disciplines of Entomology, Botany, and Chemistry- to answer fundamental questions about the evolution of biodiversity and conservation biology. Our work focuses on the interface of animal behavior, chemical ecology, evolution and adaptation to understand the mechanism, history and trajectory of species interactions.

DAN PEACH

The Dan Peach Vector Ecology Lab is a research group in the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. We are also part of the Department of Infectious Diseases in the College of Veterinary Medicine. We use a variety of ecological, behavioral, sensory, computational, and molecular techniques to investigate the interactions between arthropod vectors and their hosts, non-hosts, pathogens, plants, other arthropods, and the environment. We also pursue the application of this vector ecology research, at multiple levels, to inform and improve vector control and surveillance.

JOE MCHUGH

A remarkable aspect of Earth’s biodiversity is that a quarter of all known species are beetles. Although about 400,000 beetle species have been discovered and described, estimates of the actual number range from 1.5 to more than 10 million. Clearly, most of beetle diversity remains unknown to science. The research in our lab falls under the broad heading of Coleoptera systematics, and includes the discovery, identification, description, inventory, phylogenetic study, and classification of beetles, especially poorly known taxa. We also contribute fundamental biological information through morphological and ecological studies.

KELLY DYER

Molecular evolution and evolutionary genetics, in particular genetic conflict, sex chromosome evolution, genetics of adaptation and speciation, and host-parasite interactions.

DON CHAMPAGNE

Role of arthropod salivary factors in pathogen transmission and immune responses in their vertebrate hosts.

HAINI CAI

A focus of my lab is to understand how a unique class of regulatory DNA called chromatin boundary elements (CBE) are involved in organizing genes into functional domains.  CBEs, also called insulators, are unique in their ability to block transcription signals from regulatory DNA called enhancers to gene promoters.  Experimental evidence suggests that CBE located at different locus in the genome can interact with each other and tether chromatin fibers into “loop domains”. Such loop domains can either disrupt or promote interactions between distant enhancer and promoters, causing changes in gene expression. Recent results from my lab further suggest that interactions between CBE are developmentally regulated to allow the formation of tissue- or stage-specific loops to facilitate gene regulation.