Insect Symbiosis and Evolution
Lab News
// Endemic Hawaiian Leafhopper Picture Book is now available
Check it out: click here
// We are recruiting graduate students to study the effects of climate change on insects and their microbes. This opportunity is part of our NSF-BII-INSITE
Contact: Gordon Bennett
learn more: click here
March/2025
Gordon Bennett presented a very brief story of mitochondrial support genes aiding symbiont cell functions @ UT Austin for the Moran-Ochman Alumni Celebration. It was soooo much fun and nice to see the "academic family" and all their cool work.
​​​
Oct/2024
Gordon Bennett presented BII-INSITE's work on insect conservation at the Dept. of Natural Resources and Environmental Management (NREM) seminar @ U. Hawaii Manoa.
​
Aug/2024
The lab presented their work at ICE 2024 in Kyoto, Japan.
​
​
​​
​
​
​
​​
July/2024
The team re-initiated field work in Hawaii. We spent ~2 weeks on Maui collecting endmic insects
​
​
​
June/2024
Perspective on how endosymbioses shaped global biodiversity over earth's history published in Genome Biology and Evolution​
​
https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evae112
​
Aug/2023
Former Ph.D. Student Yumary Vasquez published her second dissertation chapter investigating whole genome evolution of Macrosteles quadrilineatus.
​https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.13919​
​
Aug/2023
Graduate Student, Miguel Estrada Caballero, joins the lab. He is an NSF BII Graduate Fellow and will be working in the evolution of Hawaiian insect symbioses and climate change.
​
July/2023
Postdoc, Younghwan Kwak, joins the lab. She is an NSF BII Postdoc Fellow and will be working on acclimitization and adaption of leafhopper symbioses to climate change.
