We've been busy! Here is some good news and fun plans for the summer. Many of us will be zipping across the world to present our work at conferences. If you happen to spot us, do come up to chat! Gaurav, Vrinda and Saurabh successfully defended their thesis proposals and are now officially stamped and certified... Continue Reading →
Our very first insect-gut microbe paper
Ashwin's Master's thesis work on the gut bacterial communities of dragonflies has been published in Current Science. The paper is highlighted in the "In this issue" section of the journal and supported by a Cover image of a Globe Skimmer (Pantala flavescens) by Shantanu. Good work, both! In this paper, we describe culturable gut bacterial... Continue Reading →
New paper: Adaptation via synonymous mutations
Update: Here is a really nice graphic that Kruttika and Gaurav made, that captures some of the fun results from this work. Our work showing rapid, parallel adaptation in Methylobacterium extorquens is now out online on the MBE website. The work represents a huge team effort from members of my former postdoctoral lab and my... Continue Reading →
Peering into the dark to shed new light on evolution
Aparna Agarwal, Kruttika Phalnikar and Deepa Agashe This article originally appeared in the 2016 edition of IMPRINT, the science magazine of the Dept of Zoology, St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. The issue focused on life in the dark, and we wrote about evolutionary adaptations to darkness. We thought we would share it with others. --- Look... Continue Reading →
New paper from the lab
Imroze and Arun's paper describing immunosenescence in flour beetles will be out in the January 2016 issue of the Journal of Animal Ecology! You can find the paper here. Here's a brief summary of the work described in the paper. In many animals, immune function decreases with age so that older animals are more likely... Continue Reading →
Lab at Bacterial Expressions II
We presented three posters and a talk in the second edition of the Bacterial Expressions conference at NCBS, and Laasya won a best poster prize for her poster on bacterial stress response via tRNA levels. Congratulations Laasya!
Announcing the first I-BEE conference on behaviour, ecology and evolution
Together with colleagues from various institutes, I am organizing the first Indian conference on Behaviour, Ecology, and Evolution at the Corbett National Park in March 2016. We hope to gather critical mass to discuss new work in these fields at a level that is currently missing. This should be an exciting meeting, and we hope... Continue Reading →
Lab presenting at Ethology & Evolution conference, IISER Mohali
This weekend, the beetle section of the lab will be presenting some recent findings at the National Conference on Ethology and Evolution (NCEE 2015) at IISER Mohali. The conference program looks promising, and we are looking forward to a fun meeting!
