News Archive

2016​

• We will greatly miss our December 2017 graduates: Aleyda, Oona, Hunter, and Preston. Congratulations to all of you!
• Congratulations to Adrian! He was awarded a 2017 Tom Slick Fellowship. Nice work!
• Manuscript accepted! Congrats Oona and Preston! (November 2016)
• Tom Slick and Ford Fellowships submitted. Good luck Adrian, Whitney, and Leila! (November 2016)
• Let's see what happens this month.... (November 2016)
• Whew, busy month. Congrats to Bridgett for successfully submitting a NSF GRFP. (October 2016)
• More congratulations are in order! Both Adrian and Whitney successfully submitted NSF DDIGs today. That was fun =) (13 October 2016)
• Congratulations to Aleyda on successfully defending her master's thesis! (October 2016)
• Check out this blog post by Whitney about her research at the Smithsonian. Parasites for the win! (October 2016)
• Benin-louse manuscript has been submitted to Journal of Parasitology​ (October 2016)
• Check out this article about Jessica in Conservation Matters (October 2016)
• Here's to a successful lab party (we had no leftovers)! (October 2016)
• Congratulations to Whitney Preisser on passing her comprehensive exams! She is now a PhD candidate! (Sept 2016)
• Biology Letters fire ant paper is out. TAMU AgriLife press release is here. The Wildlife Society write-up is here. (Sept 2016)
• Congratulations to Oona Takano for successfully defending her Master's research! Great job! (Sept 2016)
• Classes are in full swing and we have a busy month ahead: defenses, comprehensive exams, and NSF grant proposals. (Sept 2016)
• Biology Letters manuscript accepted! Whoo-hoo! Stay tuned for the link and more information. (August 2016)
• Coming soon: start of classes, thesis defenses, and prelim exams. It's going to be a busy fall. (August 2016)
• Light lab (Oona and Preston) and WFSC (Voelker lab) representing at the AOU meetings #NAOC2016. Check out Oona's tweets (@ombirds) and the meeting hashtag for more information. (August 2016)
• Aleyda just submitted her first manuscript to Southwestern Naturalist. This manuscript explores the associations between herpetofauna and pocket gopher burrows. (July 2016)
• Reviews are back from Biology Letters, manuscripts are in preparation, busy busy! (July 2016)
• Adrian gave two great presentations (1 poster, 1 talk) at #asmgopher. Whitney is presenting next at #aspedmonton (July 2016)
• It's academic meeting time! The Light lab will be at #evol2016, #ASMgopher, parasitology meetings, and more. (June 2016)
• Grant proposal submitted to Texas Parks and Wildlife in collaboration with Amy Baird, Michelle Haynie, and Russell Pfau. If funded, this project will examine the diversity of pocket gophers (genus Geomys) across Texas. (June 2016)
• The first of several fire ant/small mammal/tick interaction manuscripts has been submitted to Biology Letters. Fingers crossed! (June 2016)
• Whitney strikes again! She has been awarded a Graduate Student Research Grant funded by the Association of Former Students and the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies at Texas A&M University to help support her summer field research in Canada later this summer. (May 2016)
• Successful large mammal prep-a-thon at the BRTC. Check out the pictures here!  (May 2016)
• Congratulations to Whitney! She received funding from the Churchill Northern Studies Centre Research and Education Committee to undertake her research in Manitoba, Canada this summer.  (May 2016)
• Congratulations to PhD student Adrian Castellanos! He advanced to candidacy today (Thursday 28 April 2016) and he is now a PhD candidate. Great work, Adrian!  (April 2016)
• The 2016 Ecological Integration Symposium was a big success. Light lab members Whitney Preisser and Oona Takano gave oral presentations and Hunter Folmar and Preston Mitchell presented posters. Joshua Brown also presented a poster for previous work in the Hurtado lab. (April 2016)
• ​The Baiomys manuscript is published online in the Journal of Mammalogy. (April 2016)
• Jessica, Aleyda, and Mal had a successful trip to New Mexico trapping gophers and collecting lice. This work is funded by the National Science Foundation to explore population genetics of a chewing louse species that is in the process of expanding its geographic range. And in the process of doing so, it is outcompeting another louse species. Cool stuff in collaboration with Jim Demastes and Theresa Spradling at the University of Northern Iowa. (March 2016)
• Congratulations to WFSC PhD student Whitney Preisser! She recently received a Willis A. Reid graduate research grant award from the American Society of Parasitologists and a travel grant from the Macroecology of Infectious Disease Research Coordination Network, funded by a joint NSF/ NIH/ USDA grant. Congrats Whitney! (March 2016)