James O'Sullivan has published the findings of his study, where he examined the effects of heat stress on ion and water balance in locusts. James was on exchange to Aarhus University from Manchester and completed all of this work during his year-long visit. James was, and continues to be an outstanding student and colleague. Check out the paper here.
With the exam period coming to a close we are happy to officially welcome Tracey Edwards to the group! Tracey will be working over the summer to examine how exposure to heavy metals influences thermal tolerance of cute little freshwater crustaceans called Daphnia. Welcome Tracey!
Today, a new manuscript has been published in the Nature journal, Scientific Reports. This work was a collaboration with Jonas Andersen, Shireen Davies, and Johannes Overgaard. We show that the ability to survive at low temperatures is linked to the ability to maintain ion homeostasis, and species that have evolved to tolerate low temperatures do so, in part, because their renal system functions more effectively in the cold. This is an important step forward, and I am very proud of the work we present in this paper. I'm also extremely thankful to Jonas for his many hours of dissecting out Malpighian tubules from 1 mg flies, which is not easy!
Check out a press release from York University here, which links directly to the open access article.
This week, Sahr Wali joins to lab for a research practicum project. Sahr will be examining the effects of neuropeptide injections on thermal tolerance in Drosophila. Sahr was previously the lab fly food chef - a job she is graciously willing to continue while she tackles some important primary research. Welcome Sahr!
Gil Yerushalmi has officially joined the Donini lab. Gil will be working with Heath on an honours thesis about how salt stress can influence thermal tolerance in Drosophila melanogaster. Welcome Gil!
What a great week in Prague!
Myself, Lisa and James all presented posters at the annual main meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology in Prague. All three posters were very well received and I won the Irene Manton prize for the best poster in the animal section. James O'Sullivan and Lisa Jørgensen, both undergraduate students in the Overgaard lab, presented their outstanding work on ion balance disruption at high temperatures in insects and crustaceans, respectively.
Lisa Jørgensen stands with her awesome poster about the effects of heat stress on ion balance in the European green crab.
James O'Sullivan tries not to laugh beside his (very serious) poster about the effects of heat stress on locust ionoregulation.
