When COVID-19 sent students home and halted lab research, Scott Edwards, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Ornithology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, decided to fulfill his lifelong dream of cycling from the Atlantic to Pacific. Two weeks before his departure on June 6, nationwide protests broke out over the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. On the same day a video of a racist encounter in Central Park involving a Black birder and white woman went viral. As a result of that incident, a group of Black birders and naturalists launched...
Some of the most fundamental questions in evolution remain unanswered, such as when and how extremely diverse groups of animals – for example reptiles – first evolved. For 75 years, adaptive radiations – the relatively fast evolution of many species from a single common ancestor – have been considered as the major cause of biological diversity, including the origins of major body plans (structural and developmental characteristics that identify a group of animals) and new lineages. However, past research examining these rapid rates of evolution was largely constrained by the methods...
Congratulations to PhD candidate Min Ya (Kramer Lab) awarded the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Merit Fellowship in recognition of her academic talent and promise!
N. Michele Holbrook, Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry and Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology has been appointed as eighth Director of Harvard Forest.
Congratulations to PhD candidate Ryan Hulett (Srivastava Lab) awarded the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Predoctoral Fellowship to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research for his project titled, "Identifying genetic pathways and cellular sources for neural regeneration in adult animals"
The purpose of the Kirschstein-NRSA program is to enhance the diversity of the health-related research workforce by supporting the research training of predoctoral students from population groups that have been shown to be underrepresented in the...
Using microCT Javier Ortega-Hernández and Yu Liu, Professor of Paleobiology, Yunnan University, China discovered Xiaocaris luoi,a new species of fuxianhuiid, an important group of early branching arthropods that are central to discussions concerning the early evolution of this phylum. Xiaocaris luoi, represents the smallest known fuxianhuiid, its trunk legs bore strong spines...
Javier Ortega-Hernández and Yu Liu, Professor of Paleobiology, Yunnan University, China have collaborated for years in the study of Chengjiang arthropods and their evolutionary significance. Their latest paper in Current Biology shows with unprecedented clarity the head morphology of the species Leanchoilia illecebrosa - a member of...
In the third publication from the international collaboration between Javier Ortega-Hernández and Prof. Yu Liu, Yunnan University, China, researchers use microCT on Cambroraster, a distant arthropod relative. The study published in ...
Trees typically experience mid-day water depressions due to water evaporating out of the plant's stomata (a tiny opening or pore in plant leaves that intakes carbon dioxide, which is needed for photosynthesis). To understand how the water stress influences carbon's movement from the leaves (where production begins) to the roots, trunk and shoots (where the water is needed), PhD candidate Jessica Gersony (Holbrook Lab) measured carbon and water traits of five mature red oak trees over the course of 24 hours at Harvard Forest.
Fish locomotion is characterized by waves of muscle electrical activity that proceed from head to tail, and result in an undulatory pattern of body bending that generates thrust during locomotion. However, isolating and studying these movements in live fishes is difficult and scientists often use robotic models instead. Most robotic fish models are either passive, flapping models that are simple but don't actively swim, or active, hard models that actively swim but take forever to construct. PhD candidate ...
Congratulations to the following IB concentrators awarded the 2020 Hoopes Prize:
Dylan Ryals (Farrell Lab) for his project, “Of Mites and Men: Using Spatially Explicit Sampling and Genetic Sequencing to Uncover Disease Dynamics of Honeybee Parasite Varroa destructor in Migratory Apiculture.”
Allison Shu Ting Law (Giribet Lab) for her project, "...
For a decade Prof. Cassandra Extavour pitched a project to students to understand whether horizontal gene transfer — the process of passing genes between organisms without sexual reproduction — might be responsible for part of the makeup of a gene, known as oskar, that plays a critical role in the creation of germ cells in some insects. PhD candidate Leo Blondel (MCO, Extavour Lab) rose to the challenge. Blondel, a first-year student in the Molecules, Cells, and Organisms (MCO) program, was able to provide the strongest suggestive evidence yet that at least part of oskar...
Prof. Mahadevan and researchers have developed a framework to quantify the fate and dynamic organization of cells into tissues from imaging data by applying techniques of fluid dynamics and chaos theory to embryogenesis.
Embryogenesis — how an organism arises from a single cell — is one of the most mysterious and complex processes in nature. The large-scale, coordinated and collective movements of cells in a tissue during embryogenesis resemble the complex and chaotic flows of fluids in the ocean or atmosphere. How the movements determine which cells are destined to...
