What a year...
Anne Leonard
Comings and goings
Seems like time for an update! Despite all the challenges thrown our way by the pandemic (lab shutdowns, conference cancellations, online teaching), some bright spots of the past year:
Jake Francis defended his dissertation, and left to begin a postdoctoral position at UC Davis with Dr. Rachel Vannette. We can’t wait to see what cool insights into plant-microbe-pollinator interactions he uncovers! Congrats!
We collectively decided that learning more about microbes would be a good pandemic project— so we (co first authors Jake Francis and Anna Tatarko produced a new paper in Current Opinion in Insect Science that explores how insights from the world of pollinator behavior might inform research into floral microbes, and vice versa.
Anthony Vaudo rounded up an impressive dataset on the macronutrient content of different plant species’ pollens (alongside data on bee corbicular loads), and in his 2020 paper, also provides a useful methodology.
PI Leonard “returned” from sabbatical and was, as they say on the Great British Bake Off show, chuffed to receive the 2020 NSHE Graduate Academic Advisor Award. Truly chuffed!