The Boyer Lab  |  Macalester College

We work to discover, describe, and understand the diversity of invertebrate animal life. We work both on local fauna and on animals that live about as far from Minnesota as you can go! In Aotearoa New Zealand we are working to discover and describe new arachnid species and testing hypotheses about their evolutionary history. We recently wrapped up several years of work in the Australian Wet Tropics; you can read about our adventures Down Under here, here, and here. We also work on the ecology and evolution of Minnesota daddy long-legs and freshwater mussels. Our research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, National Geographic, and the National Park Service. 

News from the Boyer Lab 

• The summer research season has begun! We are happy to welcome Ruth Dunlap '25 to the team; she will be working on a new project in collaboration with University of Maryland - Baltimore County scientists Mercedes Burns and her PhD student Ryan Bacon on the geography of sexual conflict in North American Opiliones.

• Zade Alafranji '24 did an outstanding job of defending his senior honors thesis at the end of the semester! Zade will continue working in the lab in Summer 2024 with the goal of developing a manuscript for publication based on his thesis work - and after that, he's off to Drexel University in Philadelphia for his PhD.

• 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.

• We had a fantastic time in Seattle this January at SICB 2024! Lab alum Haley Heine '23 presented a beautiful talk on her undergraduate honors thesis research, and current lab members Zade Alafranji '24, Sarah Henderson '24, Uni Vang '25, Elsa Vieregg '25, and Rachel Christensen '25 all presented posters on their work. We met up with collaborators and also lab alum Nathaniel Moyes '22 who is working on his master's degree in Zoology at the University of British Columbia.