News

Check out 1st year grad student Juliana’s new review paper in Philosophical Transactions!

“Mechanistic models to meet the challenge of climate change in plant–pathogen systems” with Ian Miller, Ruby An, Emme Bruns, and Jess Metcalf https://doi-org.proxy01.its.virginia.edu/10.1098/rstb.2022.0017

Juliana had her first first-author data paper accepted in Ecology and Evolution! She conducted this work when she was a technician in the lab, and her results show that the environment (diet in this case) can determine whether or not parasite resistance carries a cost.

Citation: Jiranek, J and Gibson, AK. Diet can alter the cost of resistance to a natural parasite in Caenorhabditis elegans. Ecology and Evolution. In press

Members of the lab had a great time at the American Society of Naturalists’ 2023 meeting at Asilomar! Congratulations to postdoc Caroline Amoroso for honorable mention for best postdoc award and for 2nd place in the natural history trivia with her team “The Rainbow Chitins.” Congratulations to undergraduate Tori Feist for honorable mention for best student poster, on her REU project with Corlett Wood this past summer (Tori was competing against graduate students!). And congratulations to Brodie Lab members Clara Stahlmann Roeder, Sarah McPeek, and Keely Pattisall on their awesome presentations!

Mandy earned an Outstanding Faculty Award (in the Rising Star category) from the State Council of Higher Education of Virginia! The press release is here.

Juliana got a UVa Graduate Global Research Grant to fund field research this summer. Congratulations!!!!

Fabiane has a new paper in press with Evolutionary Application! It’s titled “A diverse parasite pool can improve effectiveness of biological control constrained by genotype-by-genotype interactions”

Juliana has a new paper out in Scientific Reports: Predicting the effects of climate change on the cross-scale epidemiological dynamics of a fungal plant pathogen

And a new review in press at Philosophical Transactions on the use of mechanistic models to predict ecology and evolution of plant-pathogen interactions in the face of climate change.

We have lots of new folks joining us! Welcome to:

Linyao Peng (postdoc)

Juliana Jiranek (transition from technician to 1st year PhD student)

Erin Scott (1st year PhD student, rotating)

Ashlyn Crain (1st year PhD student, rotating)

Sarah Talley (undergraduate)

Sarah was promoted to lab/research technician 2 in recognition of her accomplishments and the new responsibilities she continues to take on. Very well-deserved Sarah!

Congratulations to Fabiane and Jai for earning a GIDI-UP Award from the Global Infectious Disease Institute at UVA! This award supports the research of undergraduate-postdoctoral research pairs, and Jai will be developing an experiment on the role of parasite genetic diversity in promoting establishment and spread of disease.