We were
First up, some awards:
Majo has been awarded the Philomathia Graduate Fellowship in Environmental Sciences! This is a prestigious fellowship for UC Berkeley graduate students, "Students are nominated to receive the award on the basis of their high level of academic distinction and exceptional promise." https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/philomathiacenter/graduate-student-fellowship-environmental-sciences
Becca was elected as a councilor for the Society of Systematic Biologists. Her term starts in January 2025.
Conference updates
Becca, Kannon, and Natalie attended SSAR 2024. Kannon gave a fabulous rendition of his Turnin’ the frickin’ frogs gay talk. Natalie presented a poster on her senior research project. Becca presented on a paper currently in review about passive accumulation of alkaloids in non-toxic poison frogs.
Becca, Kannon, Valeria, and Majo are heading to WCH 10 in Malaysia in 2 weeks.
Personnel updates
Sophie Draper started as our new lab technician. Sophie just graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota. She has experience with snail husbandry, fieldwork in Africa, people / project management, and research in genomics.
Nuzha Baksh said goodbye as she heads to Athens, Georgia to start a PhD.
We got two pet frogs for the lab (Dendrobates tinctorius). They were named Denny’s and IHOP after some disagreements about restaurant preferences arising from Kannon’s after-fieldwork dinners.
Adri Jeckel started in July as a new postdoc. She will be working on the toxic flies and poison frog projects.
Fieldwork
Becca went to Ecuador in May to gather samples for the NSF project on color in poison frogs, in collaboration with Santiago Ron. The field season was productive but the samples are still in Ecuador because airlines refuse to carry on the dry shipper. She also visited collaborators at USFQ including Juan Manuel Guaysamín who will be working this fall with Majo trying to cultivate tetrodotoxin-producing bacteria from Atelopus.
Majo traveled to Colombia for her final field season of the PhD to collect samples of a few species of Harlequin toads that live in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Working with Beto Rueda and his team she was able to obtain even more samples and species that she had hoped for.
Quickly wanted to highlight some of our lab’s publications this year:
Out in March, from a side project during my PhD and a collaboration with friend Anne Chambers: Chambers^, EA, RD Tarvin^, JC Santos, SR Ron, M Betancourth-Cundar, DM Hillis, MV Matz, and DC Cannatella. 2023. 2b or not 2b? 2bRAD is an effective alternative to ddRAD for phylogenomics. Ecology and Evolution 13: e9842. PDF • https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.9842 • Twitter Thread (3/10/23)
Out in June, Kate Montana’s undergraduate thesis: Montana, KO, V Ramírez-Castañeda† and RD Tarvin. 2023. Are Pacific Chorus Frogs (Pseudacris regilla) resistant to tetrodotoxin (TTX)? Characterizing potential TTX exposure and resistance in an ecological associate of Pacific Newts (Taricha). Journal of Herpetology 57: 220—228. (Open Access) https://doi.org/10.1670/22-002 • PDF
Out in October, Yin Chen Wan’s undergraduate thesis: Wan^, YC, MJ Navarrete^†, LA O’Connell, LH Uricchio, A Roland, ME Maan, SR Ron, M Betancourth-Cundar, MR Pie, K Howell, CL Richards-Zawacki, ME Cummings, DC Cannatella, JC Santos*, and RD Tarvin*. 2023. Selection on visual opsin genes in diurnal Neotropical frogs and loss of the SWS2 opsin in poison frogs. Molecular Biology and Evolution 40: msad206. (Open Access) https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msad206 • PDF • Twitter Thread (10/21/22)
Out in November, a Tarvin lab collaborative review paper: Tarvin*, RD, KC Pearson*, TE Douglas, V Ramírez-Castañeda, María José Navarrete. 2023. The diverse mechanisms animals use to resist toxins. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-102320-102117 • PDF
Also out in November, a response to a commentary about specimen collection: Nachman, MW, … RD Tarvin, et al. 2023. Specimen collection is essential for modern science. PLoS Biology 21:e3002318. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002318 • PDF
It’s grant season…
Valeria was awarded a Tinker Field Research Grant from the Center for Latin America Studies at UC Berkeley
Valeria, Majo, and Tyler each received funding from the MVZ for summer research
Kannon Pearson was recognized by the Rausser College Dean’s Office of Instruction and Student Affairs Award Committee with the Kenneth L. Babcock Prize in Environmental Science for his outstanding research and outreach efforts. Kannon will be joining us as a new graduate student in the fall.
TBD was awarded an NSF PRFB and will be joining the lab in the fall. More information soon!
Sofia Beskind, currently an undergraduate researcher in the Matz Lab at UT Austin, will be joining us this summer to do research on Epipedobates, funded by an NSF REU grant that she received. Congrats Sofia!
For an ongoing project, we needed some fresh caecilian tissue. Caecilians are fossorial amphibians that are notoriously difficult to locate in the field. Fortunately, Majo is currently in Ecuador and knew exactly where to find one: Yanayacu! Incredible find Majo.
Caecilia orientalis
Caecilia orientalis