Welcome to the Insect and Evolution Lab
@ Rutgers Newark!We are a group of evolutionary biologists who are interested in systematics, behavior, biomechanics, ecology and more! We mainly work on: Evolution and diversification of dragonflies, damselflies, termites and cockroaches, Divergence time estimation, Diversification analyses, Morphological and molecular systematics, Biogeography, Transcriptomics, Community Dynamics, Social behavior, Sexual Selection, Population genetics, Taxonomy and some Fossil insects.
Jessica L. Ware lab NEWS and EVENTS
November 15, 2016: Come learn about bedbugs and cockroaches with us, at the Brooklyn Historical Society! http://brooklynhistory.org/visitor/ourpeskyneighbors
August 27, 2016: Why do people see dragonflies only in the summer? : Jessica was on NPR Weekend Edition to answer that question!
Summer 2016: Congratulations to Dr. Philip Barden, winner of this year's Snodgrass Award!!!
Congratulations to awesome Ware Lab undergraduates, Erdine Sylvain, Arianne Wallace, Renato Nunes, Jack Kellogg, who participated in Research Day April 11, 2016!
Jessica was featured on this month's Arthro Pod podcast! Thanks Jonathan Larson for the invitation!
Congratulations to Will and Dominic, who BOTH wrote successful NSF postdoctoral fellowships! Dominic heads to the Paris Museum to continue his work on Cockroaches, and Will heads to the University of Tennessee to continue his work on automatic phenotyping with ODOMATIC!
Need a date? Manpreet Kohli's recent work will point you in the right direction for Odonata fossil calibrations!
How to date a dragonfly: Fossil calibrations for odonates
Manpreet Kaur Kohli, Jessica L. Ware, and Günter Bechly Article number: 19.1.1FC Copyright Palaeontological Association, March 2016
Also see the following for announcement about the fossil calibration database!:
http://sysbio.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/07/23/sysbio.syv025
Ware lab research by Daniel Troast: Pantala in the news!
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/quirks-quarks-for-mar-12-2016-1.3487387/dragonflies-are-world-travellers-1.3487413 https://archive.org/details/ArthroPodEP18ADancewithDragonflieswithJessicaWare
http://news.rutgers.edu/research-news/small-dragonfly-found-be-worlds-longest-distance-flyer/20160302#.Vtehs4wrLu5 http://www.newsweek.com/small-dragonfly-may-make-worlds-longest-flights-432655 http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0303/This-tiny-dragonfly-migrates-the-longest-distance-of-any-insect http://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/quirks-quarks-for-mar-12-2016-1.3487387/dragonflies-are-world-travellers-1.3487413
Dominic Evangelista: new NSF Postdoctoral Fellow!
http://www.newark.rutgers.edu/news/biology-doctoral-candidate-dominic-evangelista-wins-prestigious-nsf-award
1KITE Science paper is published and online! http://www.wired.com/2014/11/when-did-insects-evolve/http://www.altmetric.com/details.php?domain=www.sciencemag.org&doi=10.1126/science.1257570
Melissa Sanchez back from the american tropics, collecting Damsels!
Melissa, who got a National Geographic grant in January this year just got back from Ecuador, Peru and Colombia collecting damselflies. Visit her blog for more information and lots of photos!
New roach pest species found in NYC
Recently, Jessica and Dominic found a new invasive cockroach species at the High Line in New York and the story has been making headlines. Read more about it here and follow the latest on Twitter: @roach_brain or @JessicaLWareLab. Here are some of the highlights:
Cold-weather cockroach discovered in NYC. But Trump insists he's lived here for decades.
Is this the Godzilla of roaches? New type of cockroach found in NYC that can withstand the cold: http://t.co/rcNiH75hqF
Automatic wing ID for dragonflies
Will is in the process of developing a software, in collaboration with the Russell Lab, that automatically identifies dragonflies from their wings. Using wing scans and computational methods, like neural networks, Will's software is currently able to identify dragonflies with an overall accuracy of 84%, and improvements are in the works!
Some notable recent publications: The Blattodea of the Guiana Shield [link] is the first checklist of the cockroaches of Guyana and includes all the species known from Suriname, French Guiana, and parts of Brazil and Venezuela. This paper, published in ZooKeys was co-authored by Dominic, Megan and Jessica. The petaltail dragonflies (Odonata: Petaluridae): Mesozoic habitat specialists that survive to the modern day, co-authored by Jessica and Melissa was just published in the Journal of Biogeography. Flying rocks and flying clocks: Discrepancies in fossil and molecular dates for birds co-authored by Jessica and colleagues was just published in Ecology Letters. Species estimates of Blattodea s.s. from Northern Guyana vary depending upon method of species delimitation, co-authored by Jessica and Dominic, was just published in Systematic Entomology
Counting the Spots: A phylogeny of Boyeria, co-authored by Manpreet and Jessica was just published in Systematic Entomology
Using DNA Barcodes to confirm the presence of a new invasive cockroach pest in New York City, co-authored by Jessica and Dominic, was just published in J. Economic Entomology
Talks from the Rutgers Commerce and Contagion symposium are now online!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqxsGMRlY6u6U_tZmzuUo0-PUb_4618as
Chiggers in NJ!http://www.nj.com/indulge/index.ssf/2014/08/chiggers_the_myths_the_truths_and_my_story.html
Science Friday! Check out Dominic discussing his and other Ware lab research on this week's Science Friday video!
How do tropical landscapes drive insect evolution? Crowd-funding systematic biologyJessica and Dominic are exploring the cutting edge of research funding. Crowd-funding is an opportunity for reaching out to the public to educate them about science that is actually happening in real-time, all while being a viable opportunity for funding small research projects. Check out the project page here..
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