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..!

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

I am thrilled to announce that our RAPID grant was funded! Our team are: coPI Chris Funk, postdoc Amanda Cicchino, collaborators Erin Landguth, Brenna Forester, Cameron Ghalambor, and Jason Dunham. We will be studying the response of Ascaphus truei to two different extreme climatic events, a heatwave and a catastrophic fire. We will explore changes that occur at the physiological and genomic levels by leveraging data we collected before the extreme events. In doing so, we will be able to better understand to what extent plasticity versus evolution contribute to organismal resilience to extreme climatic events. Stay tuned for more!

A really nice little study conducted in our lab by undergrad James Frakes (now a grad student) on how flow affects tolerance to heat stress and hypoxia in a stonefly. James found that when giant stoneflies (Pteronarcys californica) are exposed to heat, they can withstand higher temperatures when the water is flowing compared to when it is still. Similarly, they can handle lower oxygen concentrations (hypoxia) in flowing versus still water. These findings have implications for aquatic insect vulnerability to climate change. Insects living in streams where flows are decreasing may be much more vulnerable than previously thought.

I am absolutely THRILLED to announce that I have accepted a tenure track faculty position at the beautiful Kellogg Biological Station - Michigan State University! I am also grateful that KBS-MSU helped me solve the 'two-body problem' by interviewing and hiring my partner Chris, as well. The Shah Lab will be part of the Department of Integrative Biology and will be up and running by January 2022!!! Stay tuned!