Work led by recent Integrative Biology graduate, Dr. Brittany Velikaneye, was published in Molecular Ecology. This study quantifies changes in DNA methylation after heat exposure in male and female moths.

Our project on “Genetic variation in carryover effects of climate change stress in Eastern oysters: developing a novel tool to increase resilience” with co-PI Sarah Donelan was funded by the UMass Dartmouth Internal MultiSEED program. Excited to start investigating the genetic basis of carryover effects.

Brittany Velikaneye’s first author paper from her PhD thesis work is published in the September 2024 issue of Journal of Evolutionary Biology.

Brittany Velikaneye, Integrative Biology PhD student in the Kozak lab was awarded a Graduate Research Excellence Grant (GREG) Rosemary Grant Advanced Award from the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) for her research on the “Regulatory role of DNA methylation in temperature-induced plasticity.”

Congratulations Brittany!

Our symposium (co-organized with David Marques and Joana Meier) “A combinatorial view on rapid speciation – the role of ancient genetic variants and hybridisation” had an excellent set of speakers and posters talking about the role of introgression in speciation!

There was also a poster presentation on “Life-stage specific reproductive responses to temperatures in the European corn borer moth”, featuring research from a large experiment by PhD student Brittany Velikaneye.

Check out our special theme issue published by Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: ‘Genomic architecture of supergenes: causes and evolutionary consequences’ compiled and edited by Emma L. Berdan, Thomas Flatt, Genevieve M. Kozak, Katie E. Lotterhos and Ben Wielstra

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/2022/377/1856

Work on “Consequences of coupled barriers to gene flow for the build-up of genomic differentiation” available as online accepted article in Evolution

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/evo.14466

Work by former honors undergraduate Arielle Enos on how temperature changes reproductive investment in less preferred mates is published in Ecology and Evolution!

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.7972

Read about research identifying the genetic basis of male response to pheromone, which was related to changes in the gene bric-a-brac, published in Nature Communications.

“bric à brac controls sex pheromone choice by male European corn borer moths”

Press release:

https://ibed.uva.nl/content/news/2021/05/how-moths-find-their-flame.html

Article:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23026-x

Our publication, Genomic landscape of reproductive isolation in Lucania killifish: The role of sex loci and salinity was selected as the Editor’s choice for the Special Issue on Speciation in Marine Environments in the January 2021 issue of Journal of Evolutionary Biology.