Congratulations Dr. Murphy!

Congratulations to Dr. Matt Murphy on successfully defending their thesis “The evolutionary ecology of signal and signal reception optimization, with a focus on butterflies (Lepidoptera: Rhopalocera)”!

Congratulations Dr. Potdar!

Dr. Sushant Potdar successfully defended his thesis: “The causes and consequences of behavioral plasticity in anti-predatory defense and mate choice in tropical butterflies” Congratulations on this monumental achievement!

Welcome Chance and Jonas!

We are pleased to welcome two new graduate students, Chance Powell and Jonas Amenyo, to the Westerman lab and the University of Arkansas this fall! Looking forward to years of discovery, creativity, and collaboration.

Team work makes the dream work

The Westerman Lab was engaged in multiple collaborations this summer, from darter transcriptomics with Dan Magoulick (USGS Co-Op), graduate student Kearstin Findley (Magoulick Lab), and Hans Hofmann (UTAustin) to the summer Junonia coenia team, including REU student Austin Martinez, undergraduates Maria Garnica and Kailey Hall, new graduate student Chance Powell, and senior graduate student Grace Read More …

Postdoc Keity Farfán Pira interviewed by JEB!

Congratulations to Dr. Keity Farfán Pira on her interview in JEB as a ECR spotlight! In this interview, Keity discusses the main findings of her recent publication, “A cis-regulatory sequence of the selector gene vestigial drives the evolution of wing scaling in Drosophila species“, as well as her experiences as a scientist and her career Read More …

Preprint on environmental effects on butterfly community abundance and behavior now available on BioRxiv!

Graduate student Grace Hirzel and former undergraduate Ashlyn Anderson’s manuscript assessing years of monthly and biweekly abundance and behavioral data of Arkansas prairie butterflies “One size does not fit all: Family specific differences in seasonal patterns of abundance and behavior in butterfly communities” is now available on BioRxiv! Check out the pre-print here.