Biodiversity Lab - Saint Joseph's University

Valerie’s back!

Congratulations to Shannon Frank for the successful defense of her Masters thesis on Life History Traits across Different Species and Strains of Drosophila. (pictured - Shannon sitting on the floor to answer questions from members of the audience who were on Zoom).

Terrapin Babies have arrived !

Another successful Terrapin Release Day.

Congratulations to Abby and Katie on terrific presentations of their Honors research at today's Biology Seminar. The audience learned about the effects of plants on shoaling in guppies (Abby), and the effects of UV radiation on growth in diamondback terrapins (Katie). Really good job!

Congratulations to Shannon, Arizona and Grace, who rocked today's departmental seminar with talks on Courtship Behavior in Drosophila, Turtle Conservation, and Shoaling Behavior in Fish (respectively).
....pictured with Domenic and Colin (from the Biodiversity Lab), and Helena, who was attending her first seminar.

Congratulations to Gabrielle Cruz on her talk (The Effects of Invasive Red-Eared Sliders on a Turtle Community) at the CUR Symposium today.

Gabrielle Cruz (first from the right), a junior in Environmental Science, recently attended the AAAS - The American Association for the Advancement of Science Emerging Researchers National (ERN) Conference in STEM. Gabrielle was joined by three other Saint Joseph's University undergraduate science majors (from left to right): Shayna Sit (Physics, '25), Deborah Duong (Chemical Biology, '24), and Joseph Popp (Physics, '24). Deborah and Gabrielle presented the work they have done in Dr. Springer's and Scott McRobert lab, respectively. All four students are recipients of the National Science Foundation (NSF) S-STEM scholarship, and received a Travel Award to attend the conference.

Congratulations to Bethany, Tricialyn, Courtney and Gigi on our new sea turtle paper.

Thanks to Emmalee Eckstein for a wonderful article on Bubba and Rio's great adventure.

Bubba and Rio’s Great Adventure Since 2007, two endangered black pond turtles, Bubba ’23 and Rio ’23, have been living in Saint Joseph’s Biodiversity Lab under the care of Scott McRobert, PhD, and his students. After 15 years, it’s finally time for them to make their return to the wild.

Congratulations to Lauren Schnell on a great presentation of her thesis research on the effects of interactions between invasive and native turtle species.