Our new paper (Climate change and the thermal physiology of aquatic insects: emerging patterns and unresolved questions in the latest issue of Current Opinion in Insect Science) is the first to review the state of our knowledge about how aquatic insects are responding to climate change. Co-authors Alisha Shah and Wilco Verberk find that climatic variation can be a strong factor in determining aquatic insect physiological traits but that responses vary considerably among taxa. Oxygen may be the key factor in determining thermal responses. Ultimately, however, there is not enough work on a broad array of taxa, making generalizations difficult at this point.

Phoebe won 3rd place at the MSU University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum 2026  for her summer research with grad student Stephanie Bristow. Phoebe used  thermal death times to evaluate thermal sensitivity in commonly found temperate lake predatory fish and  damselfly prey. Way to go Phoebe!! 

We attended SICB for the first time as a lab! I am so proud of everyone for doing an amazing job with their talks and posters!! 

Congrats to Peter Martin, PhD student for receiving an Endowment Award from the Society for Freshwater Sciences! Peter will use the funds to further his awesome work looking at how oxygen and temperature shape physiological diversification in Lestes damselflies! 

Huge congratulations to undergraduate (Shah lab REU) Evelyn VanDenBurg for getting her REU work published! Evelyn measured differences in heat stress and acclimation in tadpoles of the American Bullfrog and the green frog, congeners that are ecologically and functionally similar but that differ significantly in their invasive abilities. Check out our paper in Frontiers of Ecology and Evolution!

Stephanie, first grad student in the Shah Lab, just passed her comprehensive exams with flying colors! Now on to the post-exam glory days of finishing her data collection..!

Congrats to Abbie for winning 1st place at the MSU Undergrad Research and Art Forum, 2025 for her poster on investigating body size shifts in dragonflies using museum specimens! So proud of you, Abbie!

Our new paper in Proceedings B shows that parasitoids living in the Rocky Mountains may have lower sensitivity to heat stress, but that warming may confer a slight advantage for this group because it will extend the amount of time they experience their preferred temperatures. Check out our paper! 

The Shah Lab welcomes Dr. Rosie Martin to KBS! Rosie received her PhD at the U. of Toronto, Missassauga, in Shannon McCauley's lab. Her awesome work on the feeding and overwintering ecology of dragonflies led her to investigate the physiological effects of warming on overwintering aquatic insects. She is a dragonfly whisperer -- a master at catching, extracting eggs, and rearing these enigmatic insects!  

 Second, although they can grow relatively quickly at warmer temperatures, they are unable to emerge successfully as adults at those same temperatures. Emergence may therefore be particularly sensitive to warming. Broadly, our results suggest that studies assessing vulnerability to climate change should go beyond measuring one or two response variables to more comprehensive analyses across multiple fitness-related traits.

Take a look at our paper out in Early View in Functional Ecology. 
Photo from Giersch et al. 2017 Global Change Biology