URAP

Rebecca Tarvin - Professor , Integrative Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Amphibians -- frogs, salamanders, and caecilians -- exhibit a stunning variety of chemical defenses, ranging from antimicrobial peptides to antipredator neurotoxins and biological glues. Amphibian glues are the least-studied of these defenses. Additionally, the methods used to measure amphibian stickiness are not standardized, with some researchers gluing together beer cans to...

Rebecca Tarvin - Professor , Integrative Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Amphibians -- frogs, salamanders, and caecilians -- exhibit a stunning variety of chemical defenses, ranging from antimicrobial peptides to antipredator neurotoxins and biological glues! These defenses generally co-occur with physiological, morphological, and behavioral adaptations that sometimes exhibit convergence with distantly related taxa. However, research into amphibian chemical defense has been far...

Jack Tseng - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

Bone crushing dogs were a diverse and successful subfamily of canids that thrived throughout North America for nearly 30 million years. As bone crushing dogs evolved they show convergent features with hyaenas in their cranial anatomy (i.e. a large sagittal crest and domed forehead to dissipate stress). While the skull...

Jack Tseng - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

With over 260 recognized extant species, the order Carnivora is one of the most diverse mammalian groups today, with a history tracing back approximately 60 million years. Crown carnivorans are divided into two suborders: Feliformia (cats, genets, hyenas, mongooses, etc.) and Caniformia (dogs, bears, raccoons, weasels, skunks, seals, etc.). Despite...

Jack Tseng - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Human actions and infrastructure are impacting biodiversity in real time, rapidly changing environments, modifying ecological interactions, and introducing new selection pressures that living organisms have never before encountered. To develop effective, targeted conservation strategies, we need to understand how anthropogenic actions, infrastructure, and management decisions influence evolution. One of the...

Jose Pablo Vazquez-Medina - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

Oxidative damage to mitochondria has been implicated in the pathogenesis of diabetes, stroke, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and many other metabolic syndrome disorders. Recent work shows that deletion of the antioxidant protein peroxiredoxin 6 (PRDX6) dysregulates mitochondrial function. PRDX6 is a multi-functional enzyme that expresses at least 2...

Jose Pablo Vazquez-Medina - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

This project seeks to characterize cells isolated from the blubber of northern elephant seal pups during the post-weaning fasting period. Elephant seal pups nurse from their mothers for ~1 month, after which they are abruptly weaned and carry out a terrestrial post-weaning fast for several months prior to...

Jose Pablo Vazquez-Medina - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

The focus of this project is to develop tissue culture models to answer mechanistic questions that are relevant to physiological responses during diving and under stress conditions in sea turtles. This project will examine sea turtles’ adaptations to hypoxia by characterizing gene expression and reactive oxygen species generation under differential...

Jose Pablo Vazquez-Medina - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

Elephant seals are expert divers that can hold their breath for long periods without sustaining any injuries, even in low-oxygen conditions. Unlike humans, they avoid the harmful effects of reduced blood flow and reoxygenation by using strong antioxidant defenses. This project will explore how their genes change during natural...

Noah Whiteman - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Approximately fifty percent of all insect species are herbivorous and together with plants, comprise over half of all named species of life. To feed on a plant, an herbivore must evolve strategies to overcome the chemical defenses (toxins) that plants produce to protect themselves from herbivory. These toxins may inhibit...

Noah Whiteman - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

During the evolutionary transition from one feeding guild to another, such as microbe- to plant-feeding, it is hypothesized that behavioral adaptations are among the first to evolve. In insects, changes to the chemosensory systems that determine host preference are necessary, not only for finding an appropriate host, but in...

Noah Whiteman - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Drosophila has been an excellent model system to uncover basic principles underlying innate immune responses. In fact, much of what we know about antimicrobial immune responses in humans was first discovered in flies! This URAP project will dive into the evolution of innate immunity in flies against two different immune...

Caroline Williams - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

The Williams Lab in the Department of Integrative Biology studies the ecological and evolutionary physiology of insects, integrating from genes to physiology to ecology. We are recruiting a cohort of undergraduates to join our lab and take part in a rigorous training program to become an undergraduate researcher. A range...