Groups: Insect Biology Faculty

We are broadly interested in understanding mechanisms that ensure proper segregation of meiotic chromosomes. Using Drosophila as a model system in combination with microscopy, genetics, and genomics we aim to answer questions about how chromosomes accurately undergo meiosis.

Integrating physiology, genomics, evolution, and microbial symbiosis to understand the biology of insect vectors of disease. For more information, please visit the Vogel lab website.

Molecular and evolutionary biology of insect parasites; virology, immunology, symbiont evolution, reproduction. Please see Dr. Strand’s lab website for more details.

Ecology and evolution of heritable symbiosis in insects. Please see Dr. Oliver’s lab website for more details.

The role of developmental mechanisms in sexual selection and the evolution of reproductive strategies in insects. For more information, please follow this link.

Behavioral and evolutionary genetics and epigenetics of social insects. Please follow the link to the Hunt lab’s website: http://huntlab.uga.edu

Effects of anthropogenic environmental change on the transmission of multi-host vector borne pathogens. For more information, please visit the Gottdenker lab website.

Gaelen Burke, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Entomology in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Science at the University of Georgia. She received her B.S. at the University of Queensland in Australia, and completed her Ph.D. degree at the University of Arizona in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Hereditary symbiosis is a common mechanism by which eukaryotic hosts can acquire traits beneficial for their fitness. Many insects have symbiotic associations with bacteria that trace back millions of years, whose function and evolution are well characterized. Insects can also possess more recently derived symbionts that are closely related to free-living bacteria, and often play a role in host defense. My dissertation focused upon Serratia symbiotica, a recently derived symbiont that infects aphids and provides protection against heat stress, and possibly also plays a nutritional role. I studied several aspects of the biology of recent symbionts, including the diversity of functional roles and evolution among hosts for single lineages of symbionts, the molecular mechanisms that contribute to defense, the early stages of symbiont genome evolution, and interactions with hosts.

While bacteria are well recognized to form beneficial symbiotic associations with metazoans, viruses are usually viewed as non-living, parasitic entities that interact with hosts in ways that only benefit their own transmission and persistence. Parasitoid wasps have viruses that have been associated with their hosts for 100 million years, and have evolved to be beneficial symbionts. These polydnaviruses (PDVs) are essential to the survival of the wasp’s offspring, which depend upon PDV gene products that suppress host immune defenses.

PDV persists as an integrated provirus in wasps, and is transmitted through the germ line, while replication to form virus particles only occurs in the reproductive tract of female wasps. Little is currently known about how virus- and wasp-derived genes interact to regulate viral replication and maintain the symbiotic association. For the past several years I, along with my postdoctoral advisor Dr. Mike Strand, have focused upon the wasp Microplitis demolitor and its associated polydnavirus named M. demolitor bracovirus (MdBV).

Sonia Altizer, Ph.D., is a Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs in the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia. She received her B.S. in biology from Duke University in 1992, and completed her Ph.D. in ecology at the University of Minnesota in 1998, followed by postdoctoral work at Princeton and Cornell University. Dr. Altizer has been at the University of Georgia since 2005. Her research interests center on infectious disease ecology and its interface with animal behavior, anthropogenic change, and evolution. Much of her recent work focuses on interactions between monarch butterflies and a protozoan parasite to better the consequences of long-distance migration for animal-pathogen interactions, and host-pathogen evolution. She also collaborates on studies looking at how factors such as seasonality, anthropogenic change, and contact behavior influence the dynamics of pathogens affecting both vertebrate and invertebrate hosts.

See The Altizer Lab website for more details.