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Chelsea featured in Barnard News!

9/2/2020

 
Congratulations to Chelsea Sinclair who was interviewed by Barnard News about her research, career goals, and winning the Turner Award from the Animal Behavior Society. The story was featured on the Barnard.edu homepage!
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Also a shout-out to lab alum Ana-Maria Rodriguez Cuadrado whose photography skills are featured throughout the article. 
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Flies @ Home: Power outage edition

8/11/2020

 
Well, this past week has been another *interesting* one for our flies! We got hit hard by Tropical Storm Isaias last Tuesday and lost power for 6 full days. Bench work was done by headlamp, and microscope work was done by opening the garage door and using battery operated book lights. When the heat advisory hit this week, the temperature in our house got dangerous for the flies, so I had to evacuate them to a friend's apartment with air conditioning to keep them cool. Fortunately, the power came back on (eventually) and now the flies are happy and safe back in my house (very much looking forward to when they can be happy and safe back in the lab!)
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Isaias's aftermath
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Microscope work by booklight

Flies @ Home: Food cooks and experiments

7/30/2020

 
I've now moved into the next "phase" of maintaining the flies at home to get ready for what will hopefully be a less disruptive Fall. The past month I've started cooking fly food in my garage, and this week I set up behavioral observations in my living room. Even baby steps are a win right now!
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Garage fly food cook
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Living room behavioral observations

Chelsea receives Turner Award from Animal Behavior Society!

7/21/2020

 
Congratulations to Chelsea Sinclair for receiving the Charles H. Turner Award from the Animal Behavior Society! This award typically provides travel and accommodation to the ABS conference for undergraduate students, along with mentorship workshops and lunches. Because the ABS 2020 Meeting is being held virtually this year, Chelsea will attend the meeting remotely and participate in mentorship and professional development actives. Yay Chelsea!! (Update 7/29: Click here to see the ABS's profile of Chelsea on Twitter)
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Flies at home: Day 100

6/23/2020

 
Today marks the 100th day that I've been maintaining our fruit fly populations at home. The garage lab has been upgraded with a new table, and I now cook fly food at home, so the flies and I are in a pretty good groove!
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ConGRADulations to Abby & Ana-Maria!

5/18/2020

 
Congrats to Abigail Gutierrez and Ana-Maria Rodriguez Cuadrado on their graduation as part of the Barnard Class of 2020!
Abby earned her BA in Biology, and Ana-Maria earned her BA in Biology with an Anthropology minor. We can't wait until we can celebrate with them in person!
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Grad Abby
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Grad Ana-Maria
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Ana-Maria and Abby present at the Biology Symposium!

5/6/2020

 
Congratulations to Ana-Maria and Abby for presenting their Guided Research & Seminar projects at the 2020 Biology Research Symposium. This year's Symposium was held over Zoom, where Ana-Maria and Abby were able to present their 1-minute oral abstracts and posters to the Barnard community!
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Congratulations Abby!

5/5/2020

 
Congratulations to Abigail Gutierrez who was awarded the Biology Department's Constance von Wahl Prize at the Barnard Honors Assembly over Zoom tonight! This prize is awarded to a graduating senior with high qualities of character and commitment to the department and her fellow students. Yay Abby!
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Congratulations Lisa!

4/26/2020

 
Congratulations to Pischedda Lab alum Suriya Lisa (BC '19), who will be starting med school at Georgetown University in the fall! Lisa worked in the lab from 2018-2019 and completed her Neuroscience and Behavior Senior Thesis in the lab looking at male mate choice. We're so excited for her!
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Physically separated, scientifically connected

4/24/2020

 
COVID-19 might have moved us all off campus and moved our flies into my garage, but the Pischedda Lab is still meeting for semi-regular lab meetings! This week's agenda: watching Abby and Ana-Maria practice a run-through of their poster presentations for the upcoming Biology Symposium, and getting an updated lab photo (even if it needed to be via Zoom!)
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Pischedda Lab: Working from home

4/2/2020

 
With the lab effectively shut down, all of our students working remotely, and me working from home (~30 miles north of Barnard), I've had to use some interesting tactics to keep our fly populations alive. The fruit flies are now my new roommates, and I have set up a makeshift fly lab in my garage! Hopefully these efforts will be enough to keep these populations alive while we ride out what's to come. See below for how I'm trying to make this work!
Garage Lab Setup
Ergonomics optional
Mini Drosophila Incubator by Tritech
Mini-fridge full of food from a canceled experiment

New paper on the genetics of pupation behavior!

2/25/2020

 
My new paper with Michael Shahandeh and Tom Turner at UCSB has been published in Molecular Biology and Evolution. In this paper, we identify two genes associated with differences in pupation behavior between Drosophila melanogaster and ​D. simulans. 
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New semester, new lab members!

2/4/2020

 
This semester the Pischedda Lab added 3 new members to our group! Welcome to the team, Holly, Mariel and Olivia! 
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Also, for anyone wondering how we get such great photos of our lab members, here is our unofficial lab photographer, Ana-Maria, making the magic happen!
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New paper on the genetics of male mate choice!

1/7/2020

 
My new paper with Michael Shahandeh and Tom Turner at UCSB has been published in G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics. In this paper, we map a male preference for female pheromones that differs between Drosophila species and find that a 1.35 Mb region on the X chromosome has a major effect on this preference.
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Happy Halloween from the Barnard Bio Department!

10/31/2019

 
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Research Lab of Alison Pischedda
Barnard College, Columbia University