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GRADUATE HIGHLIGHTS & GRANTS

GRADUATE HIGHLIGHTS

(Wow, did I have a great time being a grad student!)

  • New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Distinguished Teaching Award,1986.

  • Max-Planck-Institut fur Verhaltensphysiologie (i.e., behavioral physiology), which now survives as The Max Planck Institute of Ornithology. Visiting Research Associate, 1986. Four month appointment at Seewiesen, Germany. Established lab for protein electrophoresis, and performed paternity studies for my doctoral research and, for Prof. Wickler, population genetic analyses of the social spiders Stegodyphus dumicola and S. mimosarum. Profs. W. Wickler and U. Reyer, sponsors.

  • National Institute of Mental Health Integrative Training Grant, 1985. For work on chemical communication and courtship in the red-spotted newt (Notophthalmus viridescens) and the spider Linyphia litigiosa (1 yr. tuition,stipend and supplies).

  • National Institute of Mental Health Integrative Training Grant, 1984. Chemical communication and courtship in the red-spotted newt (1 yr. tuition, stipend and supplies).

  • NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant, 1983. Reproductive behavior of the spider Linyphia litigiosa.

  • Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles Graduate Research Grant, 1983. Sexual selection and chemical communication and courtship in the red-spotted newt.

  • Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid (Cornell Chapter), 1983. Reproductive behavior of the spider Linyphia litigiosa, and chemical communication in the red-spotted newt.

  • Graduate Research Assistantship, 1983. Performed electrophoretic paternity analyses on Belding's ground squirrel (Spermophilus beldingi) and the spider Linyphia litigiosa, with Paul W. Sherman and Bernard May (one semester tuition, stipend and research allowance).

  • Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid (National), 1982 and 1983. Reproductive behavior of the spider Linyphia litigiosa.

GRANTS

  • Dr. Jacek Radwan ( Jagiellonian University , Krakow, Poland ) has been awarded a 9 month Fullbright Fellowship (9 mos, from September 2000) to collaborate with me in a study of sexual selection in acarid mites. Radwan has been studying these mites since 1990. In several species of this family, two male morphs co-occur within the same populations: fighter males have a thickened and sharply terminated third pair of legs, whereas scramblers have unmodified legs. Modified legs are used during fights to stab (often mortally) other males. A male's morph is determined in different ways (genetically or environmentally) in different species, and thus this system provides a unique opportunity to identify ecological factors favoring male dimorphism against monomorphism and those favoring environmental morph determination against genetic. The study will have two main objectives: 1. To determine if individuals possessing phenotypes associated with lower fitness (scramblers) carry more deleterious mutations. 2. To determine whether superior metabolic competence and lower fluctuating asymmetry are associated with low mutational load and to resolve which of these measures is a better candidate for a general fitness index.​

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  • Hypoxia and larval care in the bumble bee, Bombus occidentalis (12 mos, from May 1996), Montana's NSF EPSCoR program. With Drs. P. Kukuk and D.L. Kilgore

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  • Courtship Energetics and the Heritability of Metabolic Competence (24 mos, from July 1994-96), National Science Foundation. Behavioral and respirometric research on the sierra dome spider Linyphia litigiosa.

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  • REU supplement to support undergraduate summer research relating rates of aging to sexual competitiveness in the sierra dome spider (6 mos), NSF.

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