Interested in joining the lab as an undergraduate or Master's student?! Email Zach (zstahlschmidt@pacific.edu).
*** NEWS ***
Spring 2019
George Todd just got his second thesis chapter ("Effects of Habitat Features and Season on Vertebrate Communities in Southern Georgia, U.S.A.") accepted by the journal Biodiversity. George is a former grad student in the lab, and is currently teaching at Coastal Pines Technical College in Waycross, GA.
The lab had a fun day at the Pacific Undergraduate Research & Creativity Conference, which is an annual showcase for all of the amazing, student-driven research happening on campus. Alyssa, David & Garrett, and Garrett & Andy presented posters, each of which represented a different one of the lab's study systems.
Jordan's paper "Should I stay or should I go? Complex environments influence the developmental plasticity of flight capacity and flight-related trade-offs" was accepted by the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, which "is a direct descendant of the oldest biological journal in the world" that has published ground-breaking papers on evolution by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
It was a lovely day for the 3rd Annual Stahlschmidt Lab Cricket Race. Christine took first place as her cricket ran away from the competition at a blistering pace (0.35 m /sec), and David and Garrett rounded out 2nd and 3rd. Though medal-less, Alyssa, Andy, Ngoc, and Sugjit showed off their skills. Despite another last-place finish in the cricket race, Dustin had a great week-- he and Michael got engaged!
Dustin successfully defended his M.S. thesis ("City limits: Heat tolerance is influenced by body size and hydration state in an urban ant community"), which is currently in review for publication! In addition to the manuscript from his thesis, Dustin is a coauthor on one published paper, and on another in revision. He's been in the lab since it started at Pacific (initially as an undergrad), and he's been absolutely critical to all of our citizen science and urban ecology projects related to ants.
Winter 2018-2019
The Stahlschmidt Lab had a blast at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology in Tampa! Dustin presented his thesis work about how water limitation affects heat tolerance, and his talk was featured in a cool blog about evolution in cities. Sugjit presented on the effects of food, water, and temperature on an array of traits-- from life history to physiology (talk and poster). Tavis had a great poster with results from data collected for our NSF grant, which is focused on the role of complex environmental variability in trait-trait interactions.
Fall 2018
Katherine and Zach's paper ("When to fight? Disentangling temperature and circadian effects on aggression and agonistic contests") was accepted for publication in Animal Behaviour! Katherine is a former undergrad in the lab, and she's now half-way through her DDS program at Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry.
The lab has four abstracts (see here, here, here, and here!) accepted for presentations at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology in Tampa, FL in January 2019. From thermal ecology to network analyses!
New students, Louis and Alyssa, have been busy setting up (hundreds of!) pitfall traps here on campus to survey insects within the riparian area of the beautiful Calaveras River.
Summer 2018
Zach and Dustin's paper ("Determinants of nutritional preferences and habitat use in an urban ant community") was accepted for publication in Urban Ecosystems.
Sugjit spent a couple weeks at the lovely Sedgwick Reserve near Santa Barbara to conduct a capture-mark-recapture study. A dip in population size resulted in him catching fewer crickets than he'd hoped, but he still seemed to enjoy his time in the field.
*** NEWS ***
Spring 2019
George Todd just got his second thesis chapter ("Effects of Habitat Features and Season on Vertebrate Communities in Southern Georgia, U.S.A.") accepted by the journal Biodiversity. George is a former grad student in the lab, and is currently teaching at Coastal Pines Technical College in Waycross, GA.
The lab had a fun day at the Pacific Undergraduate Research & Creativity Conference, which is an annual showcase for all of the amazing, student-driven research happening on campus. Alyssa, David & Garrett, and Garrett & Andy presented posters, each of which represented a different one of the lab's study systems.
Jordan's paper "Should I stay or should I go? Complex environments influence the developmental plasticity of flight capacity and flight-related trade-offs" was accepted by the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, which "is a direct descendant of the oldest biological journal in the world" that has published ground-breaking papers on evolution by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
It was a lovely day for the 3rd Annual Stahlschmidt Lab Cricket Race. Christine took first place as her cricket ran away from the competition at a blistering pace (0.35 m /sec), and David and Garrett rounded out 2nd and 3rd. Though medal-less, Alyssa, Andy, Ngoc, and Sugjit showed off their skills. Despite another last-place finish in the cricket race, Dustin had a great week-- he and Michael got engaged!
Dustin successfully defended his M.S. thesis ("City limits: Heat tolerance is influenced by body size and hydration state in an urban ant community"), which is currently in review for publication! In addition to the manuscript from his thesis, Dustin is a coauthor on one published paper, and on another in revision. He's been in the lab since it started at Pacific (initially as an undergrad), and he's been absolutely critical to all of our citizen science and urban ecology projects related to ants.
Winter 2018-2019
The Stahlschmidt Lab had a blast at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology in Tampa! Dustin presented his thesis work about how water limitation affects heat tolerance, and his talk was featured in a cool blog about evolution in cities. Sugjit presented on the effects of food, water, and temperature on an array of traits-- from life history to physiology (talk and poster). Tavis had a great poster with results from data collected for our NSF grant, which is focused on the role of complex environmental variability in trait-trait interactions.
Fall 2018
Katherine and Zach's paper ("When to fight? Disentangling temperature and circadian effects on aggression and agonistic contests") was accepted for publication in Animal Behaviour! Katherine is a former undergrad in the lab, and she's now half-way through her DDS program at Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry.
The lab has four abstracts (see here, here, here, and here!) accepted for presentations at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology in Tampa, FL in January 2019. From thermal ecology to network analyses!
New students, Louis and Alyssa, have been busy setting up (hundreds of!) pitfall traps here on campus to survey insects within the riparian area of the beautiful Calaveras River.
Summer 2018
Zach and Dustin's paper ("Determinants of nutritional preferences and habitat use in an urban ant community") was accepted for publication in Urban Ecosystems.
Sugjit spent a couple weeks at the lovely Sedgwick Reserve near Santa Barbara to conduct a capture-mark-recapture study. A dip in population size resulted in him catching fewer crickets than he'd hoped, but he still seemed to enjoy his time in the field.
