4 Aug 2025

Texts you don't want to receive: "Hey, what's the lab record for the number of stings in one day?" Ian, Ella, and Kyra found active nests of yellow jackets and bald-faced hornets today. Ian is still getting grief for somehow escaping without getting stung.

24 July 2025

Well. Now what?

23 July 2025

Why We Have a Lab Group, Part I. Today, the prof forgot a lab member's birthday. Big whiff! Nvm. Our postdoc reminded us by kicking off birthday wishes in the group chat, while a PhD student took the person to lunch and another had made gulab jamon to share. I appreciate this crew every day.

23 July 2025

Why We Have a Lab Group, Part II. A warm preview of the gulab jamon was shared at the lab lunch table while the birthday celebrant was esconced elsewhere. Ok! We have a lab group to hold each other accountable to save some for the birthday celebrant this afternoon. Wow.

30 June 2025

Our lab has long had a focus on teaching as well as research. Congrats to Sayesha, whose course proposal on plant-insect interactions was accepted for next spring's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute offerings for people aged 50+

26 June 2025

Sharing the woods with animals, Part 2: Ian, Mai, and Ella H. are in the woods sampling eastern larch beetle traps today. They just sent this photo to the lab group chat with the question, "What's our position on getting a lab dog?" 

25 June 2025

Sharing the woods with animals, Part 1: Last week, Ian found this skull. This week, Ella M. found one of her traps decimated by a live one. Data point lost forever. What was it? A black bear, or a juvenile T-rex? Discuss.

17 June 2025

Welcome Mai! Mai is a visiting student from our friend Etsuro Takagi's lab, and will be with us until November. She brought a "gift" from her PI, who I am sure heard me yelp in Tokyo as I tried the super spicy wasabi snacks. Fire.

16 June 2025

Brian is visiting the Great Lakes Forestry Centre in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario today, meeting with friends and colleagues and returning a borrowed budworm autotrap (but not the budworms it captured...Ontario has enough). 

3 June 2025

Summer lab party, slingin’ pizzas in our back yard again. Last year, there was an infamous pizza with gummy worms that melted into a beautiful fruit compote. This year, there were four. There were no leftovers.

1 June 2025

Welcome to our new postdoc, Dr. Shealyn Malone! She will be working on outbreak dynamics of mountain pine beetle in the Black Hills, and heading the western branch of our lab now opening in Missoula.

19 May 2025

Our summer crew has arrived! Thrilled to have Ella back, along with Kyra, Charlie, Paige, and Marvin 4, Marvin 5, and Marvin 7. The latter are pet mantids that came with Paige and have taken up residence on our lab table.

16 May 2025

A Friday afternoon lunch celebration for all in the Department at Celebrate Entomology. Graduate students received numerous awards this year. Congrats to Emma, who received the 2025 Peterson award for Masters students!

15 May 2025 4:15pm

Just kidding. We do not keep ice cream in the same lab freezer as our research samples. We have multiple freezers. But yes one freezer does smell like skunk now, even with kitty litter packed around the box.

15 May 2025 4:00pm

I've met some really fascinating friends of students, like Emma's friend who is in town while studying predator avoidance in vertebrates.  We are happy to offer freezer space to store samples while visiting, but wow our ice cream now smells like skunk.

10 May 2025

Left, right, left, right, left, right, lasso....cheering and applause! So goes hooding a PhD graduate at university commencement. They grow up so fast! Very proud to participate in this milestone for Jess as she prepares to defend.

14 Apr 2025

Brian is off to Santa Fe, New Mexico to present our chemical ecology work on eastern larch beetle with Emily Althoff (Mizzou) and Brian Sullivan (US Forest Service).

8 Apr 2025

Outstanding! Sayesha was just informed that she has received a 2025 University of Minnesota President's Leadership & Service Award. Nominated by her peers, it reflects her commitment to going above and beyond. Congrats!

2 Apr 2025

It seems like just yesterday that Clarissa joined our lab fresh from Wellesley. Today she found out that she has been accepted to UMN's Conservation Sciences graduate program! Well done Clarissa!!

27 Mar 2025

Congrats to our friend Dr. Andrew Mann in the Blanchette lab on his PhD defense today! And a nice touch honouring the work of our lab group on eastern larch beetle with the name of a newly discovered beetle-associated fungus. Cool!

25 Mar 2025

Congrats to Jessica for successfully writing a University of Minnesota Graduate School Research Travel Grant that will fund her trip!

24 Mar 2025

Jess is away this week, processing samples of spruce budworm at the University of Ottawa's stable isotope laboratory on a collaborative dispersal project with Felipe Dargent and Clement Bataille.

20 Mar 2025

Brian gave a talk to the Midwest-Northeast State Forestry Alliance meeting in downtown Minneapolis. The work that state forest health leads perform in monitoring and managing our forests is critical and appreciated!

14 Mar 2025

Tims Tams are still intact. Still light traffic in lab. There is no one around this morning except me and a math puzzle: if I had brought a pie to celebrate pi day, what would have been the denominator for sharing?

13 Mar 2025

Four exclamation marks on alumna Grace Haynes' text, "I got the job!!!!" Cheering on former students never gets old. We look forward to seeing you back in the Twin Cities in the forest health scene soon, Grace!

11 Mar 2025

Val is back from Australia, helping sort some awesome old reprints. She brought Tim Tams to share but most students are out for Spring Break (research in the Black Hills, visiting family, etc.). This is going to be a very challenging week.

10 Mar 2025

Alumnus Derek Rosenberger is back in town for a bee identification workshop and dropped by the lab. I am so impressed by the work he is doing in measuring effective pedagogy and how he involves undergrads in his research.

9 Mar 2025

Field season has begun with Ella in the Black Hills for a week. She will be revisiting lightning-struck trees while her earnest furry four-legged coworker Sasha will be keeping track of nemeses. Every. Single. One.

25 Feb 2025

Clarissa, Emma, Sayesha and Brian are off to Annapolis, Maryland for the week to present work and meet colleagues at the USDA Interagency Forum on Invasive Species.

16 Feb 2025

Congrats to Emily, who has published the pheromone components of eastern larch beetle with our collaborator Brian Sullivan of the US Forest Service. Electroantennograms never cease to amaze.

30 Jan 2025

Research just proved that parents have a favourite child. So do advisors have a fav. student? Today it's alumna Grace, who sent Chugach Chocolate bars with a bound copy of her thesis. Kelp and cayenne is surprisingly good.

27 Jan 2025

Sometimes there is a stigma when people leave science, but we celebrated with Talia today. She can do science with the best of them, but her heart is in helping adults with disabilities. There are so many ways to make the world a better place!

13 Jan 2025

Congrats to our Alaskan alumna, Grace, who just accepted a job with the forest health team in the Alaskan Division of Forestry and Fire Protection! We're so proud of her!

15 Dec 2024

Our collaborative work on the chemical communication systems of eastern larch beetle with Brian Sullivan and Emily Althoff has made the front page of the weekend edition of the Minnesota Star Tribune.

2 Dec 2024

Congrats to Rose, for her first ever scientific paper! Rose and our friends Brytten and Erika screened several species of larch for suitability to eastern larch beetle. The results are a tad worrisome.

13 Nov 2024

Brian, Ella, and Sayesha are in Duluth through Thursday, meeting with colleagues and giving presentations at the Upper Midwest Invasive Species Conference.

4 Nov 2024

Brian and Sayesha are off to the Annual Lymantria Dispar Review in Louisville, KY where Sayesha will be sharing our work examining non target effects of Btk sprays. It's been awhile since we've been to this national meeting. 

31 Oct 2024

Random quips I didn't think I'd say to a grad student: "Wow, cool antennae, Emma!" (They were homemade. Crafty graduate student meets pipe cleaners. Excellent form; looked like satin moth). Happy Halloween!

15 Oct 2024

Best of luck this year to Emma and Clarissa, who are submitting NSF Graduate Research Fellowship proposals. My reference letters are in. And now, the long wait for spring results.

8 Oct 2024

Grading, I just laughed at a midterm answer pointing out a question ambiguity that everyone, including the prof, missed. The student is in my lab. Grateful for creative students that embarrass me, ha!

13 Sept 2024

Back from NCFPW, where yes the trivia team of Reed, Wegmueller, Otto, Kramer, Cooke, Roe, and Aukema did win the forest health trivia! Shout out to Dr. Roe's mastery of spruce coneworm that carried us.

9 Sept 2024

With talks and posters done (or mostly done), the lab is off to the annual gathering of forest health professionals that is North Central Forest Pest Workshop. Sault Ste. Marie, here we come!

15 Aug 2024

A beautiful late summer day in the woods can make you feel like dancin' - especially when you almost step on a friendly prairie rattler at the base of a Ponderosa pine in the Black Hills. PS: Ian can jump!

19 July 2024

You cannot wipe the smiles off our faces for Rose. Monday: interview. Tuesday: defense. Wednesday: deep breath.... Thursday? Dream job offer! Courageous career change complete! Bravo!!

12 July 2024

Yay Emily! With PhD in hand, she starts in three weeks as Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist in a creative joint venture between U Missouri & Lincoln U. Mizzou, you're getting a good one!

10 July 2024

Lab summer social celebrating several completions and new arrivals! Great weather for slingin' some pizzas in the backyard and yes, several creative toppings made their return.

9 July 2024

Congrats to Grace who successfully defended her MS thesis on the resin defenses of tamarack. A great collaboration with Marcella Windmuller-Campione and Dan Griffin.

4 July 2024

Three upcoming defenses in the lab on larch beetle and tamarack: Grace, Emily, and Rose on July 9, 12, and 16! Incredibly proud of the work these students have done.

1 July 2024

Happy Canada Day! Today Brian is using British spelling for all student thesis edits for extra colour and flavour. (Edits can be reverted on Thursday as desired.)

12 June 2024

It's amazing how fast drought has turned to flooding. Many thanks to Two Rivers Towing for sending in a skid steer to rescue the budworm crew's vehicle in the Arrowhead.

31 May 2024

Who doesn't enjoy a good tractor pull!? Spring rains + field work = grad school stories. The spongy moth crew appreciates our local Minnesota [non-judgmental] farmers with John Deere tractors.

29 May 2024

Paying it forward: Congrats to Kristy McAndrew, who became the first PhD graduate of one of our of our lab's graduates (Sam Ward). Well done Kristy! She starts as Asst. Prof. Extension Forestry at Mississippi State U in July.

22 Apr 2024

Grace and Rose are taking a break from writing their Masters theses to share their work at the Western Forest Insect Work Conference in Missoula, Montana

20 Apr 2024

We repurposed a flock of old Christmas trees from this paper into a scavenger hunt at The Great Minnsect Show that hosted close to 2,000 of our closest friends.

20 Apr 2024

The scavenger hunt for forest insects at The Great Minnsect Show was a hit, as was our local emerald ash borer!  This one looked friendlier than most, and looked a lot like Sayesha 

15 Apr 2024

Congrats to Jess who received a 2024 President's Student Leadership & Service Award after nomination from her peers. Thanks for all you do to improve our community!

26 Mar 2024

Congrats to our most recent alum, August Kramer, for his new position as the Central Region Forest Health Specialist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources! Go August!

23 Mar 2024

Brian was in Northfield to talk to growers at the 15th Annual Upper Midwest Hazelnut Growers Conference. Gutsy move by the organizers to put the bug guy between the flavor talk and lunch!

11-13 Mar 2024

Despite a flight cancellation, every one of our three grad and postdoc visitors made it for a recruiting visit.  We think they'll make great additions to the team; stay tuned for exciting announcements soon!

28 Feb 2024

Many thanks to our Forest Service partners for the invitation to present a research synopsis at the Forest Health Coop meeting in Roseville! Always great to see so many friends and colleagues.

21 Feb 2024

Rose and Grace presented work on host screening and tree defense with attendees at the 2024 Forestry and Wildlife Research and Practice Review. Always great to share results with land managers!

12 Feb 2024

Elucidating host breadth is a cruical component to forecasting potential tree mortality for an invasive species. Check out this new paper on elongate hemlock scale led by Dr. Robert Venette.

6 Feb 2024

Packed house at the annual DNR/US Forest Service Forest Health Day in Grand Rapids, where Jess and Grace shared their work. Everyone is hoping that conditions in 2024 fare better than 2023!

9 Jan 2024

Emily's working with a collaborator at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC this week, describing and identifying what appears to be a new species of parasitoid from her field work! 

8 Jan 2024

Sayesha is presenting a poster on her research plans with spongy moth at the USDA Interagency Research Forum on Invasive Species in Annapolis, MD.

1 Dec 2023

Oh she does so, so much more than budworms. Congrats to Jess, who just won the college graduate student chili cookoff! Bravo!

25 Oct 2023

Welcome to our newest team member, Clarissa, who joins us on the elongate hemlock scale project. As it turns out, she shares a birthday with the PI. Big party next month!

6 Oct 2023

Emily and Sayesha just wandered in carrying three enormous puffballs! We're pretty sure they're edible, although we might consult with our friends in plant pathology before making risotto. 

15 Sep 2023

There were some great student presentations at the North Central Forest Pest Workshop this week. Congrats to Jess, Emily, and Rose for the UMN sweep of the student awards!

12 Sep 2023

Our newest lab member Sayesha is also giving a presentation today: the Valedictory Address at the MS graduation ceremony for the Erasmus Mundus program in Valencia, Spain!

11 Sep 2023

With posters printed and slides assembled, the lab is off to Wausau, Wisconsin for the North Central Forest Pest Workshop.

24 Aug 2023

The lab made cookies together today. Yes, a few trees were sectioned during chainsaw training. We are proud to use Stihl products.