The Boyer Lab | Macalester College
evolution and biogeography of invertebrate animals
evolution and biogeography of invertebrate animals
We work to discover, describe, and understand the diversity and distribution of invertebrate animal life. We study both local fauna and animals that live about as far from Minnesota as you can get! In Aotearoa New Zealand we are discovering and describing new arachnid species and testing hypotheses about their evolutionary history. We also work on the ecology and evolution of Minnesota's daddy long-legs and freshwater mussels. Our research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, the National Geographic Society, and the National Park Service.
News from the Boyer Lab
We have a new paper out, describing the first known cave-adapted mite harvesters from Aotearoa New Zealand. This work was part of the honors thesis of Uni Vang '25, and we are thrilled to see it published! Special congrats to Uni and student coauthor Sarah Henderson '24, and thanks to all of the Boyer Lab members who supported them and their work along the way.
Lab alum Margot White '14 worked on DNA barcoding of freshwater mussels when she was a student at Mac. She went on to earn her PhD in biogeochemistry at Scripps, and this summer she is starting her own lab at the University of British Columbia. Margot is a brilliant scientist and will no doubt be an amazing mentor to her students at UBC!
Zach Popkin-Hall '13 described new species of mite harvesters from Queensland, Australia during his time in the Boyer Lab, and now researches behavioral and genomic aspects of mosquito evolution. He was recently offered a tenure-track faculty position at Western Connecticut State University, and has accepted! He plans to engage undergraduates in new local research projects. Congrats to Zach!!
Senior honors students Rachel Christensen and Unitas Vang successfully defended their theses in April! Both Uni and Rachel worked on the diversity and distribution of New Zealand's mite harvesters, with a focus on how we define and identify species. Super proud of both of them!
Seniors in the lab all presented capstone talks on their research projects in March, and they were excellent. Congrats to Rachel Christensen, Yvonne Moreira-Andrade, Uni Vang, and Elsa Vieregg for completing this milestone!
Lab alum Jill Oberski '16 studied the evolution of Australian mite harvesters during her time at Mac, and has continued to work on arthropod systematics ever since. She has accepted an assistant professorship at Hope College, starting in 2026, where she will mount a research program focused on ant diversity and evolution with her own crew of undergraduates and no doubt teach amazing classes.
Zade Alafranji '24 and I traveled to Montréal to present our work at Evolution 2024 and had a great time learning from folks in our scientific community and connecting with colleagues, including lab alums Penny Kahn '16 (PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia) and Pietro Tardelli Canedo '19 (PhD candidate at George Washington University).
We have a new paper out in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution! We started working on this project pre-COVID, with labwork initiated by Rina Morisawa '20 and continued by Phoebe Fu '21 and Nathaniel Moyes '22. Haley Heine '23 carried out data analysis and brought the project to fruition through her senior honors thesis work. This project allowed us to finally answer the "how many species?" question in a group of New Zealand arachnids that I have been worrying about off and on for two decades! Such a pleasure to collaborate with Shahan Derkarabetian, who taught us to generate and analyze subgenomic data derived from target enrichment of UCEs.