Nathan started working in the Hoke Lab in 2018 after graduating from Lewis & Clark College with a B.A. in Biology. His interests include fish and cephalopod behavior and physiology, as well as developing his shower singing career. Outside the lab, Nathan can often be found wandering in the mountains or planning his next trip to the ocean. He is working on coding and analyzing over 500 videos for the intercross courtship project with Laura. He is also joining our fish husbandry team this semester, working with undergraduates to care for our guppies. |
0 Comments
We've sent Rachel off to Ecuador for six weeks to get the lay of the land. This is her first time going abroad and we're excited to hear all about her experience. While she's there she will be connecting with Dr. Guayasamin and other Ecuadorian research colleagues, investigating frog mating behavior by doing field work in the Amazon and visiting the University San Francisco de Quito (USFQ). She's hoping to find methods for making 3D models of individual frog movement over the course of a few weeks, and to see how we may be able to visually keep track of where we find the frogs.
Read all about her first week in her own words here: amphibiousrach.wordpress.com/2019/01/23/first-week-in-ecuador/ The Hoke lab rang in 2019 by sending Kim Hoke and Laura to the 2019 Annual Meeting for the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology (SICB) in Tampa, Florida. Laura gave a well-received talk in the Monday morning Neuroethology session entitled "Sex on the brain: Effects of reproduction on brain and behavior in Trinidadian guppies." On Saturday morning Kim co-chaired a session for the DEDB Best Student Paper. Lab alum, Molly Womack, also presented a poster on Saturday entitled "Signatures of Relaxed Selection Characterize Earless Toad Lineages." A lovely time was had by all as we start off the new year with great research and great friends!
You can check out #SICB2019 on Twitter to see more highlights from the weekend.
Laura offered our undergraduate students a chance to learn R this semester in a free, voluntary workshop that she designed and implemented. The group met once a week for most of the semester and started out by simply learning how to assign a value to an object. Now they are analyzing and graphing their own data and they presented their work to the lab yesterday. The group included several previous REU students who worked with data from their independent projects and now have even more ideas for future projects. Laura hopes to put together a compilation of her teaching materials from this semester for us, but this is another option for learning R from the CSU Library for those who may feel inspired after seeing this group's success!
The Hoke Lab has been thinking about creativity recently. Leorah led us in a mini-workshop for lab meeting about discovering our creative types, modified from a professional development class she took through CSU's Office of Training and Organizational Development. Some of us wrote haikus about our work afterward to flex our creative muscles and practice science communication!
Kim Dolphin and Miles both presented posters as part of the CSU Graduate Student Showcase. We are very proud of their posters and work!
This semester, our lab group, formerly known as HAGFish, expanded to include a new member - Dr. Kristen Ruegg. Our new group acronym is "G-RHAF" (pronounced like "giraffe") for Primary Investigators Ghalambor, Ruegg, Hoke, Angeloni, and Funk . At the end of September in our monthly G-RHAF lab group meeting, Leorah led a discussion of the CSU Principles of Community and Kim Dolphin led an activity for creating community standards or group norms, from which this document was synthesized. It's a way for us to maintain clarity about our needs and expectations as our lab group grows. One of the benefits of working with such a large group of great scientists is the many opportunities for collaboration, but working in such close proximity and sharing space and equipment also means it's important for us to know how to interact positively and respectfully. This document allows us to explicitly state the values of our group and the expectations that we agree to uphold.
Kim Hoke, Laura and Leorah went to Montpellier, France for the II Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology. We had a wonderful time networking with some amazing scientists and learning about the huge breadth of work in evolution. Leorah (who received an Administrative Professionals Professional Development Award to attend through CSU's Commitment to Campus program) particularly enjoyed the SCREAM Symposium - "PUBLIC COMMUNICATION? DON'T SHOUT...SCREAM (SCIENCE COMMUNICATION RESEARCH EMPOWERS AMAZING) OUTREACH." She came away with some exciting new ideas for science communication and outreach for the Hoke lab and beyond! Laura presented a poster on her intercross guppies in the first poster session - "Rapid breakdown of genetic correlations in Trinidadian guppies using experimental intercross." We also particualrly enjoyed talks by Molly Womack on how selection and development alter correlated structure in evolution, Eva Fischer on convergence, divergence and connectivity in mechanisms of parallel evolution, and Lauren O'Connell on the physiology of poison sequestration by poison dart frogs. We all attended the closing dinner together, which was held at Abbaye de Valmagne, constructed in 1275. It was pretty amazing to see so many biologists partying and dancing the night away against such a majestic backdrop! Be sure to check out #Evol2018 on Twitter for more highlights.
|
Our primary goal is to understand the processes that shape evolutionary trajectories. We focus on the mechanisms of convergent evolution of behavioral and morphological traits. We link molecular, neural, and developmental mechanisms to their consequences for organismal phenotypes, and we investigate the neural and hormonal mechanisms of context- or experience-dependent changes in behavior.
|