Congrats to Lauren and Dahlia, who presented their summer research projects at the 2025 Summer Research Institute Poster Session today! Both will be continuing their summer projects for their senior theses!

Congrats to Harini who presented her Guided Research & Seminar projects today at the 2025 Biology Research Symposium! She gave a 1-minute talk and a poster presentation about her project.

Our new paper, led by Isabella Martinez, has been published today in Animal Behaviour. We used hemiclonal analysis to sample naturally occurring variation in male mating duration and measure the fitness consequences of prolonged matings for both males and females. We found that longer matings resulted in a paternity advantage for males, but lowered the total number of offspring produced by females, indicating sexual conflict over this behavior. 
Read Barnard's coverage of this work here.

Our new paper is out today in Evolution! This work was led by our lab technician, Avigayil Lev, and co-authored by lab alum (and current biology staff member) Abigail Gutierrez and undergrad Aanya Srinivasan. Although male mate choice is typically thought to evolve because of the direct fitness benefits that males receive from being choosy (in the form of more offspring sired), we show that male mate choice can also confer ​indirect fitness benefits (in the form of more successful daughters) that reinforce these direct benefits. 
Check out Barnard's coverage of this work here.

Our new paper, coauthored by lab alums Grace Freed ('23), Isabella Martinez ('24), Avigayil Lev ('22 and current lab technician), and Ana-Maria Anthony Cuadrado ('20), has been published today in Ecology and Evolution! In this paper, we use hemiclonal analysis to document additive genetic variation in both pre-copulatory and post-copulatory components of male mate choice for large females! This project was a massive undertaking in which we measured male mate choice for over 1300 fruit flies in total! 
Check out Barnard's coverage of this work here.

Congratulations to Aanya, who presented her summer research project today at the 2024 Summer Research Institute Poster Session!

Ali presented Isabella Martinez's senior thesis research today at the 3rd Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology in Montreal, Canada. Izzie investigated the fitness consequences of variation in mating duration for both males and females, finding evidence for sexual conflict over mating duration. Click here to see a recording of the presentation!

Our new paper, coauthored by lab technician and Barnard alum Avigayil Lev ('22), has been published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology! This work, part of a collaboration with Andrew Stewart's lab at Canisius University, uses populations created by Andrew to look at the life history changes associated with >400 generations of artificial selection on body size in Drosophila melanogaster. We found that flies selected for small body size had lower juvenile viability, fecundity, and absolute egg size, but higher relative egg size, than flies selected for large body size. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that egg size is a key constraint on body size evolution in this species. Check out Barnard's coverage of this work here. 

In preparation for the Altschul Hall science building renovation, we spent the week relocating to temporary lab spaces in Milbank Hall, where we'll be for the next 2+ years. We put our science on hold to move to these spaces, but we'll be able to start up again this summer! We'll miss the views from Altschul 13 (the penthouse)! 

​Congrats to Ananya Lahiri, Isabella Martinez, and Eliza Tagle, who graduated from Barnard today! Ananya earned a BA in Cellular and Molecular Biology, Eliza earned a BA in Physiological and Organismal Biology, and Izzie earned a BA in Biology and in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies! 

Izzie gave her senior thesis research talk today at the 2024 Biology Research Symposium. Her senior thesis work, funded by a Sigma Xi Grant, studied the fitness consequences of variation in mating duration. She began this work as a junior for her Guided Research & Seminar project. Congrats!