LAB NEWS
October 2024
New grant in the lab! Robin was just awarded an NSF Innovations in Graduate Education grant to do research on how training in science communication impacts and prepares graduate students for their future jobs, and to help bring science communication education to EEB programs across the country. This is a collaborative effort with the fabulous folks pictured below (the leadership team from left to right: Virginia Schutte, Rebecca Swenson, Meena Balgopal, Bethann Garramon Merkle, Dale Broder, and Robin Tinghitella).
October 2024
New grant in the lab! Robin was just awarded an NSF Innovations in Graduate Education grant to do research on how training in science communication impacts and prepares graduate students for their future jobs, and to help bring science communication education to EEB programs across the country. This is a collaborative effort with the fabulous folks pictured below (the leadership team from left to right: Virginia Schutte, Rebecca Swenson, Meena Balgopal, Bethann Garramon Merkle, Dale Broder, and Robin Tinghitella).
September 2024
It's been too long since the last update! Aaaahh! Lots to report - lots of new papers (check out the publications page), travel for research and conferences, and a new MS student amongst other things. Welcome to the lab Kayla Martinez! And, huge congrats to Amanda Klingler who landed her dream job at UCCS this summer!
August 2023
Welcome Mary Westwood, postdoc on an NSF PRFB, to the lab! We're so glad you're here!
We're all off to Hawai'i for some rejuvenating field work :)
June 2023
Welcome to Lauren Wols, a new MS student in the lab, co-advised with the ever-awesome Erica Larson. We're excited you're here!
June 2023
Totally bittersweet news - PhD student Jay Gallagher and MS student Aaron Wikle successfully defended their theses! Woohoo! But, how are we going to do this without you both? Aaron is off to an awesome data analysis position and Jay is now a postdoc at UC Davis. Huge congratulations to both!
Feb 2023
Dale and Robin were awarded a new NSF grant to investigate the role of plasticity in the evolution of novelty in animal communication! Woohoo!
Feb 2023
Robin is taking on a new role as Mentoring Liaison for DU's MERISTEM ADVANCE grant. She'll be designing and implementing our first ever faculty mentorship program for STEM faculty at DU.
Dec 2022
Jay and David's big new paper is out in Evolution Letters! Learn all about how the decoupling of sexual signals and their underlying morphology has facilitated rapid phenotypic diversification of songs in Hawaiian field crickets!
Sept 2022
Welcome to new PhD student Amanda Klingler! Amanda joins us from UCLA where she just finished her MS.
This month we also attended GREEBs in Nederland, CO and Gabrielle gave her first talk on her dissertation work. Woohoo!
And, Robin is officially an administrator - she is now Associate Chair of the Dept. of Biological Sciences and Co-Chair of DU's iChange Task Force, appointed by the Provost.
July 2022
We're filming with PBS!!!! Can't give you all the details yet, but exciting things are coming in fall of 2023!!
To Sweden we go! Nearly the whole lab traveled to Sweden for the 2022 ISBE meeting. We had a blast traveling, staying in a great house together, and learning about all the fab behavioral ecology happening around the world.
May 2022
New papers!!! Two papers accepted this week - one at Behavioral Ecology led by two former undergrads and one at J Evol Biology led by former MS student, Clara Jenck. It will be so great to see these out soon! Let's keep this great news flowing!
More postdoc LOVE!! Mary Westwood was awarded an NSF PRFB!! She will join the lab in early 2023 to continue her awesome work on circadian rhythms in rapidly evolving populations of the Pacific field cricket.
Rockstar PhD student Gabrielle Welsh was just awarded a Lewis and Clark grant! She'll be traveling to Australia for some epic field work this year.
It's been too long since the last update! Aaaahh! Lots to report - lots of new papers (check out the publications page), travel for research and conferences, and a new MS student amongst other things. Welcome to the lab Kayla Martinez! And, huge congrats to Amanda Klingler who landed her dream job at UCCS this summer!
August 2023
Welcome Mary Westwood, postdoc on an NSF PRFB, to the lab! We're so glad you're here!
We're all off to Hawai'i for some rejuvenating field work :)
June 2023
Welcome to Lauren Wols, a new MS student in the lab, co-advised with the ever-awesome Erica Larson. We're excited you're here!
June 2023
Totally bittersweet news - PhD student Jay Gallagher and MS student Aaron Wikle successfully defended their theses! Woohoo! But, how are we going to do this without you both? Aaron is off to an awesome data analysis position and Jay is now a postdoc at UC Davis. Huge congratulations to both!
Feb 2023
Dale and Robin were awarded a new NSF grant to investigate the role of plasticity in the evolution of novelty in animal communication! Woohoo!
Feb 2023
Robin is taking on a new role as Mentoring Liaison for DU's MERISTEM ADVANCE grant. She'll be designing and implementing our first ever faculty mentorship program for STEM faculty at DU.
Dec 2022
Jay and David's big new paper is out in Evolution Letters! Learn all about how the decoupling of sexual signals and their underlying morphology has facilitated rapid phenotypic diversification of songs in Hawaiian field crickets!
Sept 2022
Welcome to new PhD student Amanda Klingler! Amanda joins us from UCLA where she just finished her MS.
This month we also attended GREEBs in Nederland, CO and Gabrielle gave her first talk on her dissertation work. Woohoo!
And, Robin is officially an administrator - she is now Associate Chair of the Dept. of Biological Sciences and Co-Chair of DU's iChange Task Force, appointed by the Provost.
July 2022
We're filming with PBS!!!! Can't give you all the details yet, but exciting things are coming in fall of 2023!!
To Sweden we go! Nearly the whole lab traveled to Sweden for the 2022 ISBE meeting. We had a blast traveling, staying in a great house together, and learning about all the fab behavioral ecology happening around the world.
May 2022
New papers!!! Two papers accepted this week - one at Behavioral Ecology led by two former undergrads and one at J Evol Biology led by former MS student, Clara Jenck. It will be so great to see these out soon! Let's keep this great news flowing!
More postdoc LOVE!! Mary Westwood was awarded an NSF PRFB!! She will join the lab in early 2023 to continue her awesome work on circadian rhythms in rapidly evolving populations of the Pacific field cricket.
Rockstar PhD student Gabrielle Welsh was just awarded a Lewis and Clark grant! She'll be traveling to Australia for some epic field work this year.
April 2022
We LOVE postdocs!! Super excited to announce that Jason Dinh was awarded an NSF PRFB to join the Tinghitella lab in 2023! Jason is finishing his PhD at Duke and will come to DU to work on the biophysics of recently evolved novel cricket songs.
And, Jay Gallagher is officially a PhD candidate! Woot!!!!
February 2022
Congratulations to Sophia Anner and Gabrielle Welsh who won 2nd place for their poster on impacts of anthropogenic noise on cricket immunity and reproductive investment at FRSES!
January 2022
Robin and David have been working with some phenomenal students at Kauai High School this year on independent research projects related to #PurringCrickets. Two students, Rachel and Makayla won 1st place at the school science fair! Woohoo! We also got some great coverage in the Garden Island newspaper.
November 2021
After two years of no field work on Molokai, we were able to get back into Kalaupapa National Historical Site to study purring crickets. Huge thanks to the part leadership and residents for being so welcoming! As with our other trips to Hawaii we learned A TON! PhD student Gabrielle Welsh, research associate Dale Broder, and Robin also did some serious field work on Kauai, taking advantage of Robin's sabbatical home on the island. Yay for concentrated research time!
October 2021
Dale Broder is back! Dale is rejoining the lab as a Research Scientist and all-around partner in crime. Welcome back Dale!
September 2021
Robin is attending a fantastic training program through the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research this week. Learning to facilitate mentorship training was super intriguing. Can't wait to implement in my own lab and more broadly at DU.
July 2021
Field work time! The whole crew is traveling to Hawaii for field work to understand the evolutionary origins of novel animal signals. After our data collection is complete, Robin will be staying on Kauai for a year of sabbatical! #TimeToSleep
June 2021
REUs and Summer Research Grant awardees are starting up this month! Congratulations to Hannah O'Toole, Delaney Sanford, and Megan Holiday! #TimeForAllTheResearch.
March 2021
Postdoc Cam Venable was awarded a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship this week!! Way to go Cam. Here's to more time for fun, successful collaboration! There were only 26 awards made, so this is huge!
Sophia Anner and Sophie Fitzgerald accepted PhD positions in phenomenal labs! They'll be joining Alycia Lackey and Doug Emlen's labs, respectively, this fall. So proud of you both!!
Great new article out on Inverse covering our lab's work on anthropogenic noise and insects! https://www.inverse.com/science/insect-sound-pollution-cricket-research
Rockstar graduates of the lab, Sophie Fitzgerald and Sophia Anner gave a fantastic talk at #FRSES this week featuring their work on the courtship consequences of a novel sexual signal. Couldn't be prouder of this crew! Sophie reached next level academic status by giving the talk just one day after surgery!
February 2021
OMG, what a big week. Second new paper out this week is in Nature Communications! This is a big one - we show that purring crickets are "singing in secret" (protected from an eavesdropping parasitoid fly) and characterize the natural and sexual selection landscapes surrounding a brand new sexual signal. www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-20971-5
We also wrote a really approachable Behind the Paper blog post for Nature Ecology & Evolution if you prefer the less jargon-y version of the story :) natureecoevocommunity.nature.com/posts/singing-in-secret-crickets-that-purr-are-protected-from-a-deadly-natural-enemy
New paper out with all-star coauthors E. Dale Broder, Rafa Rodriguez, Gil Rosenthal, Damian Elias, and Brett Seymoure in Biology Letters. We discuss initial conditions that facilitate the maintenance or elimination of new signals/ receiver features. Come for the pretty pictures, stay for the fetish rats and purring crickets. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0733
January 2021
A fun new podcast on our research on the impacts of noise pollution on insects is out today. Enjoy! This was really interesting to record - hope we can do more podcasts in the future! www.morrisanimalfoundation.org/article/episode-27-noise-pollution-effect-crickets-podcast
Whew! So glad 2021 is here. And, we have several exciting new publications in press! Interested in clandestine communication, the evolution of novelty, or teaching inter-institutional CUREs? Stay tuned (and check out the publications page for a preview of things to come).
September 2020
We have a new postdoc! A huge DU welcome to Dr. Cameron Venable!
July 2020
Welcome new MS student, Aaron Wikle, and PhD student Gabrielle Welsh! We're all so excited to have you join the lab this year!
Robin has a new paper out in Phil Trans Roy Soc detailing how the 'ecological stage' (ecological conditions where male-female interactions play out) change the benefits of mate choice, driving preference evolution. It's part of a great new theme issue on the evolution of reproductive isolation 'beyond the first barriers'. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstb.2019.0546
Former undergrad Anne Bowen's paper on anthropogenic noise and reproductive investment is out in BEAS as Featured Student Research. Congratulations, Anne! https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-020-02868-3
June 2020
TENURE! Robin got tenure and as of Sept 1 will be promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at DU! Thanks to all of you who helped get me to this point!
May 2020
We are so excited for all of our graduating seniors this year (Sophia, Sophie, Aziz, May, Josie). You will be so missed! I want to especially recognize Sophie Fitzgerald who was awarded this year's Distinguished Thesis Award in Biological Sciences! Thanks for being such an important part of the lab seniors!
Former undergrad rockstar Anne Bowen's senior thesis was just accepted for publication in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology! Check back soon to learn more about how anthropogenic noise impacts reproductive investment in crickets!
April 2020
Postdoc-extraordinaire David Zonana was awarded an NSF Post-doctoral Research Fellowship to continue work on #PurringCrickets!! Way to go, David!!!! We are so excited to have your continued leadership and fun in the lab!
Former MS student, Jake Wilson's first first-author publication is out in the Journal of Orthoptera Research (https://doi.org/10.3897/jor.29.39228)
with co-advisor Shannon Murphy and outstanding undergraduate researcher, Sophia Anner, as co-authors. Way to go, Jake! We miss you. I guess this also makes me an official orthopteran researcher :)
February 2020
MS student Clara Jenck's first paper (and first first-author paper!!) is coming soon to Ecology and Evolution! Way to go Clara! Read more about phenotypic differences between sticklebacks with red and black nuptial coloration here: https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6105. This paper also includes co-first author and former PhD student Whitley Lehto and three outstanding undergraduate researchers, Brian Ketterman, Luke Sloan, and Aaron Sexton.
December 2019
Team #PurringCrickets is headed back to the field. Keep up with the crew by following Robin on Twitter @RobinMTing. You'll find us on Oahu, Hawaii, and Kauai in late December/early January recording cricket songs and measuring the preferences of choosy females and eavesdropping natural enemies for a novel sexual signal...and surfing, snorkeling, swimming, and eating our way through Hawaii.
December 2019
New papers coming soon! PhD student, Whitley Lehto's, huge first chapter showing how stress-induced parental effects alter sexual selection was accepted at Evolution and MS student, Jake Wilson, has a paper on the effects of advanced maternal age on sons' fitness coming out in Journal of Orthopteran Research. Go team!
November 2019
Robin was nominated for "Excellence in Research" in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics!
September 2019
Welcome new postdoc David Zonana! David earned his PhD at UC Boulder in 2019 and brings his expertise in networks and gene flow to our #PurringCrickets project. We're excited to have you, David!
July 2019
New papers out and in press! First one is on science education (my second love) and forthcoming in the Journal of Integrative and Comparative Biology. Led by former postdoc, Dale Broder, learn how authentic science with dissemination increases self-efficacy of middle school students: https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icz140. Also collaborative work with Erica Larson and Scott Taylor on how climate change might impact hybridization by insects in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (doi: 10.3389/fevo.2019.00348) and a collaborative paper with Mayra Vidal and the rest of the awesome Murphy lab in Molecular Ecology (https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.15218). Woohoo!
July 2019
Conferences, conferences, conferences! Evolution was a blast (despite the AV going out during Robin's talk!!) and Dale Broder and Robin co-organized a symposium on "The what, why, and how of new animal conversations" at Behaviour 2019. What a great group! To top it all off, Dale's undergrad and Tinghitella lab field assistant, Aaron Wikle, won a poster award! Congratulations to all.
June 2019
Fieldwork marathon in Hawaii! We're recording #PurringCricket songs and measuring the preferences of choosy females and eavesdropping natural enemies for this novel sexual signal. Off to Kauai, Oahu, the Big Island, and Molokai! Every once in a while we get the opportunity to work in some fun :)
May 2019
Awesome when great things happen for great students! Ph.D. student Brooke Washburn's application for the RC Lewontin Early Award from the SSE was funded!
April 2019
Official ad is posted for a postdoc position in my lab working on rapid evolution of sexual signaling in Hawaiian field crickets. Join us for some super cool work in breathtaking places (a favorite post-fieldwork recovery spot is pictured). #PurringCrickets #OurFieldWorkIsBetterThanYours Apply here: http://jobs.du.edu/cw/en-us/job/492328/postdoctoral-research-associate
Congratulations to PhD student Brooke Washburn who was awarded an Orthopterists' Society Grant to uncover the genomics of purring crickets! Her first cricket grant!
March 2019
Former MS student, Ross Minter's second chapter is accepted at Current Zoology and will appear in a Special Column on Learning and Neurobiological Aspects Meet Sexual Selection. Check it out here: https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoz014
MS student Gabrielle Gurule-Small's paper is out at Global Change Biology - read about the life history consequences of developing in anthropogenic noise at https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14610
DU's news office wrote a nice article about Robin's recent NSF CAREER grant. You can learn more here www.du.edu/news/robin-tinghitella-wins-prestigious-nsf-career-award-crick-cats-research
February 2019
PhD student Whitley Lehto's second chapter was just accepted at Evolutionary Ecology Research! Check it out in the next stickleback special issue. Nice!
Lots to celebrate - MS student Gabby Gurule-Small's second chapter was just accepted at Global Change Biology and Robin received a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society!
January 2019
Congratulations to grad student Jay Gallagher who received his first Sigma Xi grant!!
December 31, 2018
We're off to Molokai, Kauai, Hawaii, and Oahu for field work. Mahalo NSF for the research support!! #purringcrickets
November 2018
AMAZING NEWS!! Robin's NSF CAREER proposal was recommended for funding! Let the research commence!
October 2018
We are delighted with all of the great press for our crick-cats! They've been featured in Newsweek, New Scientist, AmazeLab (USA Today), HawaiiNewsNow, and DU News. Read all about how we discovered purring crickets!
September 2018
Welcome new graduate students, Brooke Washburn and Jay Gallagher!
August 2018
New paper on its way in The American Naturalist! We've discovered purring crickets - are they crick-cats? Read all about it: www.amnat.org/an/newpapers/DecTinghitella.html
July 2018
PhD student Whitley Lehto won an award for her fabulous talk on parental effects on mate choice at Stickleback 2018! Congrats, Whitley!
June 2018
Honors thesis students Luke Sloan and Kallie Feldhaus and MS student Gabby Gurule-Small graduated this month. They're all off to bigger things and we're so proud of their hard work!
May 2018
Undergrad Anne Bowen and Robin both featured in a story about undergraduate research at DU - check it out! news.du.edu/undergrads-show-off-research-chops-at-annual-research-and-scholarship-symposium/
MS student Gabby Gurule-Small rocked her thesis defense! She's now our resident expert on noise pollution impacts on singing insect fitness. Way to go, Gabby!
The Tinghitella lab was well represented at DU's Undergrad Research Symposium this year. Luke Sloan, Kallie Feldhaus, and Anne Bowen wowed the judges! Anne even walked away with the top award for Research with the Most Impact! I'm a proud lab mama.
April 2018
MS student Jake Wilson and post-doc Dale Broder were both awarded grants from the Orthopterists' Society!! MS student Clara Jenck's kickstarter was fully funded! Summer research, here we come!
March 2018
Robin's TedX MileHigh Adventure was a hit! Read all about it at www.tedxmilehigh.com/waiting-dating-mating-adventure/
March 2018
Help MS student Clara Jenck fund her summer field research! Clara is crowdfunding her work and she's nearly 75% funded! Check out "Paddleboarding for Biodiversity" on kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/fishybusiness/paddleboarding-for-biodiversity
While you're at it, check out this feature on Clara's work in SUP the Magazine! www.supthemag.com/features/environment-one-student-using-sup-save-fish/
March 2018
MS student Clara Jenck was awarded the Society for Northwestern Vertebrate Biology Scholarship for her work on population genomics of red and black sticklebacks from WA state! Go Clara!
And, our students kicked butt at the 2018 FRSES meeting! Undergraduates Kallie Feldhaus and Kirsten Fetrow (both mentored by postdoc extraordinaire Dale Broder) won first and second place, respectively. Grad student Jake Wilson took home the first place poster prize, and grad student Claudia Hallagan rocked her talk, winning 2nd place! GO team!
February 2018
MS students Jake Wilson and Clara Jenck both awarded Shubert grants!
February 2018
The Tinghitella lab is doing a thing! Join us at "Waiting, Dating, and Mating", a TedX MileHigh Adventure at Invisible City on February 13th. This is a free (!!) event with food, drinks, stories about animal communication, and hands on activities with our research organisms. Fun! You can reserve tickets here: www.eventbrite.com/e/waiting-dating-and-mating-tickets-42253510387. Come learn about our research on animal mating behavior!
January 2018
MS student Gabby Gurule-Small's first paper is accepted at Biology Letters! Keep an eye out for "Developmental experience with anthropogenic noise hinders adult mate location in an acoustically signaling invertebrate".
December 2017
Several new papers published with grad student and undergrad co-authors! Robin's review of male competition and speciation is out in Behavioral Ecology, two case studies were recently published with the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, and we have a new paper on how competitive asymmetries arise out in Current Zoology. Check out the updates on the Publications page.
November 2017
Congratulations to MS student Claudia Hallagan who won 2nd place in the student poster contest at the Entomology Society Meetings! Way to go!
October 2017
The lab is off to the Entomology Society Meetings - visit with Dale, Gabby, Claudia, Kirsten, and Robin at our talks and posters.
September 2017
Welcome to new grad students Clara Jenck and Jake Wilson to the lab! Clara is investigating population genomics of stickleback populations that differ in breeding color and Jake is building on collaborative work with the Murphy lab on transgenerational fitness effects of advanced maternal age.
June 2017
The lab is off to the Evolution meetings in Portland, OR. Say "hi" to Robin, Dale, Whitley, and Gabby there! Robin is speaking in the Male Competition and Speciation Spotlight session.
Grad student Gabby Gurule-Small got her Sigma Xi grant!!
May 2017
Former MS student Ross Minter's first chapter on cognition and mating success in threespine sticklebacks was accepted at the journal Ecology and Evolution (co-authors Jason Keagy and Robin). Look forward to "The relationship between male sexual signals, cognitive performance, and mating success in stickleback fish". Available soon!
April 2017
Congratulations to MS students Gabby Gurule-Small and Claudia Hallagan who were both awarded Orthopterists' Society Grants this morning!
Robin and Gabby visited the National Park Service Night Skies and Natural Sounds Division to talk about our work on effects of anthropogenic noise on mating behavior and fitness in acoustically signaling insects. Fun!
PhD student Whitley Lehto was awarded a travel grant to attend ABS this summer and also received DU's Dissertation Fellowship!
March 2017
MS student Faith Lierheimer's first paper (her DU Honors thesis) has been accepted and published! Read Lierheimer and Tinghitella's "Quantity and quality of available mates alters female responsiveness but not investment in the Pacific field cricket" in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology! DOI 10.1007/s00265-017-2298-0
Robin had a fabulous time speaking about our research at the 2017 Founders Forum on March 1st! Check out the highlights here http://founders.du.edu/forum/ and here news.du.edu/the-personal-lives-of-crickets/.
February 2017
PhD student Whitley Lehto was awarded a 3rd place prize for her poster about parental effects on offspring mate choice at the 2017 Front Range Student Ecology Symposium!
Congratulations to MS student Gabby Gurule-Small who was awarded a $4500 Inclusive Excellence Award!
January 2017
Congratulations to MS student Claudia Hallagan and PhD student, Whitley Lehto, who were both awarded Moras and Erne Shubert Graduate Fellowships!
January 2017
Robin is giving an invited talk in the Spotlight Session on Male Competition and Speciation at the 2017 Evolution meetings in Portland, OR. Check out more details here: http://www.evolutionmeetings.org/spotlight-sessions.html
August 2016
Robin is guest editing a special column on male competition and speciation in Current Zoology. See cz.oxfordjournals.org/malecomp for more details! Proposed paper titles are due in April 2017.
July 2016
Like Father, Like Daughter - doctoral student, Whitley Lehto's research is in the news! http://news.du.edu/like-father-like-daughter/
July 2016
Welcome new graduate students!!! Faith Lierheimer (Tinghitella lab undergrad extraordinaire) is staying on for her MS, and Claudia Hallagan is joining us this fall too (co-advised with Shannon Murphy).
June 2016
Gus is making waves in the DU Magazine! Check out this profile of one of our amazing undergrads: https://magazine.du.edu/campus-community/countdown-commencement-ecology-degree-provides-antidote-desk-job
June 2016
Congratulations, 2016 Tinghitella lab graduates!!
(from left to right: Brian K., Robin (with Brooks), Faith L., and Gus K.)
May 2016
Three awesome undergrads are defending their Honors Theses at DU's Undergraduate Research Forum this week! Congrats to Faith Lierheimer, Brian Ketterman, and Gus Kitchell!
May 2016
Clara Jenck received a Summer Research Grant to study the epigenetic underpinnings of stress-induced parental effects on mate choice with PhD student Whitley Lehto! Way to go!
April 2016
Robin is putting together a symposium at ISBE 2016 on Male Competition and Speciation with partners in crime Alycia Lackey and Michael Martin. Check out our awesome speaker lineup and rsvp to attend at: https://malecompsymp.wordpress.com or http://tweetvite.com/event/ISBEMCSpeciation.
April 2016
Much to celebrate! Lab undergrad extraordinaire, Faith Lierheimer, was honored with the Turner Award from the Animal Behavior Society, which affords her an all expenses paid trip to the Animal Behavior meetings to present her thesis research on the Pacific field cricket. And, PhD student Whitley is at is again - she was honored with the Robin Morgan Award for her work with young women in STEM.
February 2016
PhD student Whitley's NSF DDIG was recommended for funding! Way to go Whitley! To our knowledge, this is the first DDIG at DU.
February 2016
Robin was awarded a Public Good Fund grant and a Society for the Study of Evolution Small Grant for Local and Regional Outreach along with DU faculty Shannon Murphy and Jennifer Hoffman to run DUSciTech - a STEM summer camp for middle school girls from underrepresented backgrounds at the University of Denver this summer.
January 2016
Robin co-authored a new paper in Current Opinions in Insect Science on complex ecological and evolutionary consequences of habitat fragmentation and habitat edges. You can find it here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214574516000080
October 27, 2015
Robin has a new paper out in Journal of Fish Biology with first-author Emily Weigel (PhD student at Michigan State) and Jenny Boughman (also of Michigan State). Congrats Emily! In this paper we demonstrate that although female sticklebacks adjust their mate choices plastically when mates are rare, they may not adjust reproductive investment. Check the paper out here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jfb.12793/abstract.
September 19, 2015
PhD student Whitley Lehto gave a great first talk at the Guild of Rocky Mountain Ecologists and Evolutionary Biologists this weekend!
September 18, 2015
Robin has a new paper out in BMC Evolutionary Biology with co-authors Chelsea Stehle (U of Nebraska) and Jenny Boughman (Michigan State University). The paper is called: Females sample more males at high nesting densities, but ultimately obtain less attractive mates. You can find a pdf here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/15/200
September 7, 2015
Robin's research on flatwing crickets was featured in an article on rapid evolution in Lateral Magazine written by Emily Gregg. Check it out here: http://www.lateralmag.com/issue-2-underground/the-fastest-show-on-earth.
September 1, 2015
Welcome to new PhD student Gabrielle Gurule-Small!
July 20, 2015
Robin and fellow Dept of Biological Sciences faculty member Shannon Murphy participated in leading a week-long summer STEM camp for low income middle school girls last week. Read a local newspaper article about the project here: http://www.northdenvertribune.com/2015/07/stem-camps-for-girls-provide-hands-on-learning/. The camp was held at Regis University across town. Next year we'll host on DU's campus!
July 1, 2015
Robin is headed to the Florida Keys for a RADseq workshop. Let the stickleback sequencing begin!!
June 22, 2015
Robin's first Data Nugget has been posted at http://datanuggets.org/2015/06/how-the-cricket-lost-its-song/! Check it out. Data Nuggets are a fantastic resource for K-16 teachers that began as a GK-12 Fellows' project at Kellogg Biological Station.
May 8, 2015
PhD student Whitley Lehto continues her streak of awesomeness with a Rosemary Grant Award from the Society for the Study of Evolution! This is a very competitive grant and we're extremely proud of her!
May 6, 2015
Undergrads Jolysa, Kyle, and Gus gave fantastic poster presentations at the annual Undergraduate Research Conference on campus! And, Jolysa defended her Honor's thesis and was admitted to grad school at CSU!! Way to go team!
April 30, 2015
Brian Ketterman and Clara Jenck were awarded a Summer Research Grant and a Pustmueller Fellowship respectively to do research in our lab this summer. Congrats!
April 16, 2015
MS student Ross Minter successfully defended his thesis today! Passed with flying colors and gave a spectacular talk. Congrats Ross!
March 31, 2015
Congratulations to PhD student Whitley Lehto who had two exciting events this week - 1) she passed her written and oral PhD qualifying exams, and 2) was awarded an Honorable Mention for her NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Proposal! Way to go!!
March 2015
Lab undergrad Gus Kitchell received a second PiNS (Partners in Scholarship) grant to travel to the Pacific - we're off to Oahu and Kauai to collect Teleogryllus for his Honor's thesis in June!
February 27, 2015
Robin is off to University of Colorado, Denver to give a seminar in the Department of Integrative Biology.
February 2015
Robin's research was profiled in an article called "Dr. Robin Tinghitella: Animal Mate Choice is More Sophisticated Than We Think" at http://www.datingadvice.com/studies/drtamc. It's a fun article written for a general audience that highlights how plastic female mate choice can be in response to things like female age and prevailing ecological conditions. A great way to share our lab's work with the public!
January 2015
Robin and Co-PI Shannon Murphy (also of the Biology Dept) were awarded a University of Denver Research Postdoctoral Fellows Award to hire a postdoc who will help us bring RADseq technology to our labs!
December 2014
Robin gave a department seminar at Colorado College. Great to see such a creative university!
December 17, 2014
Robin and fellow DU faculty member Shannon Murphy were awarded an Olin Faculty Development Grant to develop and publish active learning case studies for our co-taught Ecology course. The grant will allow us to support three dynamic, young female grad students this summer to collaborate on the case studies. Yahoo!
December 4, 2014
Congratulations to grad students Ross and Whitley whose first paper was just accepted at Behavioral Ecology. Go team!
November 3, 2014
Robin is headed to Murray State University this week to give a departmental seminar co-hosted by the Watershed Studies Institute.
October 2014
MS student Ross Minter was awarded a coveted position in the 2015 Teach For America corps! He'll be teaching secondary science in DENVER public schools next year. Congrats, Ross - you're going to be great, and we're glad you're staying in CO!
September 2014
Our lab spent the day skyping and chatting with 7th graders from Highlands Ranch, CO about behavioral ecology research in our lab. They visited our cricket and fish labs virtually and asked a ton of amazing questions. We look forward to visiting their classrooms next time! Here's a quick video highlighting our visit: http://youtu.be/xtlFoI9GCQo
August 2014
Robin and Whitley took on New York City at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology meeting this summer. Robin gave a talk and Whitley gave her first poster at an international meeting, highlighting work on the evolutionary loss of the stickleback's red throat in WA populations (co-authors MS student Ross Minter and PI Robin Tinghitella).
August 2014
DU undergrad, Gus Kitchell, travelled to Moorea, French Polynesia for collection and field work with Teleogryllus oceanicus field crickets.
May 2014
Congratulations to Jolysa Gallegos and Emrys Andromeda-Focht who were awarded Pustmueller Fellowships to conduct research this summer. Time to collect all the data!
May 2014
Faith Lierheimer, Gus Kitchell, and Kyle Robrock were all awarded Summer Research Grants through the Partners in Scholarship program at DU! Way to go labbies!
May 2014
Faith presented her poster "Female crickets raised in silence are less choosy in mate choice then counterparts raised with song" at DU's Undergraduate Research Forum. Nicely done!
May 2014
Ross, Whitley and Robin are on the way to Washington to collect 500+ sticklebacks. Wish us luck!
April 2014
Robin and Tom Quinn (DU Biology) were awarded a PROF grant to investigate "The Genomics of Rapid Morphological and Behavioral Change in Mating Signals". Let the RAD-seq begin!
April 2014
Faith and Robin are headed to the Big Island of Hawaii to collect crickets for a project on geographic variation in sperm competition and reproductive investment.
April 2014
Robin's new paper on flexible mating behavior in house crickets was published in Animal Behaviour - check it out!
April 2014
Whitley was awarded a Doctoral Fellowship for Inclusive Excellence for 2014-2015. Congrats, Whitley!
August 2013
Robin's new paper with coauthors Emily Weigel, Megan Head, and Jenny Boughman was published in Ecology and Evolution. It highlights how mate choice in threespine sticklebacks changes when mates are rare and time is short.
July 2013
Robin and Becca attended the Animal Behavior Meetings in Boulder, CO.
June 2013
Undergraduates Joey Fisher and Faith Lierheimer were awarded Summer Research Grants at DU! Congrats!
We LOVE postdocs!! Super excited to announce that Jason Dinh was awarded an NSF PRFB to join the Tinghitella lab in 2023! Jason is finishing his PhD at Duke and will come to DU to work on the biophysics of recently evolved novel cricket songs.
And, Jay Gallagher is officially a PhD candidate! Woot!!!!
February 2022
Congratulations to Sophia Anner and Gabrielle Welsh who won 2nd place for their poster on impacts of anthropogenic noise on cricket immunity and reproductive investment at FRSES!
January 2022
Robin and David have been working with some phenomenal students at Kauai High School this year on independent research projects related to #PurringCrickets. Two students, Rachel and Makayla won 1st place at the school science fair! Woohoo! We also got some great coverage in the Garden Island newspaper.
November 2021
After two years of no field work on Molokai, we were able to get back into Kalaupapa National Historical Site to study purring crickets. Huge thanks to the part leadership and residents for being so welcoming! As with our other trips to Hawaii we learned A TON! PhD student Gabrielle Welsh, research associate Dale Broder, and Robin also did some serious field work on Kauai, taking advantage of Robin's sabbatical home on the island. Yay for concentrated research time!
October 2021
Dale Broder is back! Dale is rejoining the lab as a Research Scientist and all-around partner in crime. Welcome back Dale!
September 2021
Robin is attending a fantastic training program through the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research this week. Learning to facilitate mentorship training was super intriguing. Can't wait to implement in my own lab and more broadly at DU.
July 2021
Field work time! The whole crew is traveling to Hawaii for field work to understand the evolutionary origins of novel animal signals. After our data collection is complete, Robin will be staying on Kauai for a year of sabbatical! #TimeToSleep
June 2021
REUs and Summer Research Grant awardees are starting up this month! Congratulations to Hannah O'Toole, Delaney Sanford, and Megan Holiday! #TimeForAllTheResearch.
March 2021
Postdoc Cam Venable was awarded a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship this week!! Way to go Cam. Here's to more time for fun, successful collaboration! There were only 26 awards made, so this is huge!
Sophia Anner and Sophie Fitzgerald accepted PhD positions in phenomenal labs! They'll be joining Alycia Lackey and Doug Emlen's labs, respectively, this fall. So proud of you both!!
Great new article out on Inverse covering our lab's work on anthropogenic noise and insects! https://www.inverse.com/science/insect-sound-pollution-cricket-research
Rockstar graduates of the lab, Sophie Fitzgerald and Sophia Anner gave a fantastic talk at #FRSES this week featuring their work on the courtship consequences of a novel sexual signal. Couldn't be prouder of this crew! Sophie reached next level academic status by giving the talk just one day after surgery!
February 2021
OMG, what a big week. Second new paper out this week is in Nature Communications! This is a big one - we show that purring crickets are "singing in secret" (protected from an eavesdropping parasitoid fly) and characterize the natural and sexual selection landscapes surrounding a brand new sexual signal. www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-20971-5
We also wrote a really approachable Behind the Paper blog post for Nature Ecology & Evolution if you prefer the less jargon-y version of the story :) natureecoevocommunity.nature.com/posts/singing-in-secret-crickets-that-purr-are-protected-from-a-deadly-natural-enemy
New paper out with all-star coauthors E. Dale Broder, Rafa Rodriguez, Gil Rosenthal, Damian Elias, and Brett Seymoure in Biology Letters. We discuss initial conditions that facilitate the maintenance or elimination of new signals/ receiver features. Come for the pretty pictures, stay for the fetish rats and purring crickets. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0733
January 2021
A fun new podcast on our research on the impacts of noise pollution on insects is out today. Enjoy! This was really interesting to record - hope we can do more podcasts in the future! www.morrisanimalfoundation.org/article/episode-27-noise-pollution-effect-crickets-podcast
Whew! So glad 2021 is here. And, we have several exciting new publications in press! Interested in clandestine communication, the evolution of novelty, or teaching inter-institutional CUREs? Stay tuned (and check out the publications page for a preview of things to come).
September 2020
We have a new postdoc! A huge DU welcome to Dr. Cameron Venable!
July 2020
Welcome new MS student, Aaron Wikle, and PhD student Gabrielle Welsh! We're all so excited to have you join the lab this year!
Robin has a new paper out in Phil Trans Roy Soc detailing how the 'ecological stage' (ecological conditions where male-female interactions play out) change the benefits of mate choice, driving preference evolution. It's part of a great new theme issue on the evolution of reproductive isolation 'beyond the first barriers'. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstb.2019.0546
Former undergrad Anne Bowen's paper on anthropogenic noise and reproductive investment is out in BEAS as Featured Student Research. Congratulations, Anne! https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-020-02868-3
June 2020
TENURE! Robin got tenure and as of Sept 1 will be promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at DU! Thanks to all of you who helped get me to this point!
May 2020
We are so excited for all of our graduating seniors this year (Sophia, Sophie, Aziz, May, Josie). You will be so missed! I want to especially recognize Sophie Fitzgerald who was awarded this year's Distinguished Thesis Award in Biological Sciences! Thanks for being such an important part of the lab seniors!
Former undergrad rockstar Anne Bowen's senior thesis was just accepted for publication in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology! Check back soon to learn more about how anthropogenic noise impacts reproductive investment in crickets!
April 2020
Postdoc-extraordinaire David Zonana was awarded an NSF Post-doctoral Research Fellowship to continue work on #PurringCrickets!! Way to go, David!!!! We are so excited to have your continued leadership and fun in the lab!
Former MS student, Jake Wilson's first first-author publication is out in the Journal of Orthoptera Research (https://doi.org/10.3897/jor.29.39228)
with co-advisor Shannon Murphy and outstanding undergraduate researcher, Sophia Anner, as co-authors. Way to go, Jake! We miss you. I guess this also makes me an official orthopteran researcher :)
February 2020
MS student Clara Jenck's first paper (and first first-author paper!!) is coming soon to Ecology and Evolution! Way to go Clara! Read more about phenotypic differences between sticklebacks with red and black nuptial coloration here: https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6105. This paper also includes co-first author and former PhD student Whitley Lehto and three outstanding undergraduate researchers, Brian Ketterman, Luke Sloan, and Aaron Sexton.
December 2019
Team #PurringCrickets is headed back to the field. Keep up with the crew by following Robin on Twitter @RobinMTing. You'll find us on Oahu, Hawaii, and Kauai in late December/early January recording cricket songs and measuring the preferences of choosy females and eavesdropping natural enemies for a novel sexual signal...and surfing, snorkeling, swimming, and eating our way through Hawaii.
December 2019
New papers coming soon! PhD student, Whitley Lehto's, huge first chapter showing how stress-induced parental effects alter sexual selection was accepted at Evolution and MS student, Jake Wilson, has a paper on the effects of advanced maternal age on sons' fitness coming out in Journal of Orthopteran Research. Go team!
November 2019
Robin was nominated for "Excellence in Research" in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics!
September 2019
Welcome new postdoc David Zonana! David earned his PhD at UC Boulder in 2019 and brings his expertise in networks and gene flow to our #PurringCrickets project. We're excited to have you, David!
July 2019
New papers out and in press! First one is on science education (my second love) and forthcoming in the Journal of Integrative and Comparative Biology. Led by former postdoc, Dale Broder, learn how authentic science with dissemination increases self-efficacy of middle school students: https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icz140. Also collaborative work with Erica Larson and Scott Taylor on how climate change might impact hybridization by insects in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (doi: 10.3389/fevo.2019.00348) and a collaborative paper with Mayra Vidal and the rest of the awesome Murphy lab in Molecular Ecology (https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.15218). Woohoo!
July 2019
Conferences, conferences, conferences! Evolution was a blast (despite the AV going out during Robin's talk!!) and Dale Broder and Robin co-organized a symposium on "The what, why, and how of new animal conversations" at Behaviour 2019. What a great group! To top it all off, Dale's undergrad and Tinghitella lab field assistant, Aaron Wikle, won a poster award! Congratulations to all.
June 2019
Fieldwork marathon in Hawaii! We're recording #PurringCricket songs and measuring the preferences of choosy females and eavesdropping natural enemies for this novel sexual signal. Off to Kauai, Oahu, the Big Island, and Molokai! Every once in a while we get the opportunity to work in some fun :)
May 2019
Awesome when great things happen for great students! Ph.D. student Brooke Washburn's application for the RC Lewontin Early Award from the SSE was funded!
April 2019
Official ad is posted for a postdoc position in my lab working on rapid evolution of sexual signaling in Hawaiian field crickets. Join us for some super cool work in breathtaking places (a favorite post-fieldwork recovery spot is pictured). #PurringCrickets #OurFieldWorkIsBetterThanYours Apply here: http://jobs.du.edu/cw/en-us/job/492328/postdoctoral-research-associate
Congratulations to PhD student Brooke Washburn who was awarded an Orthopterists' Society Grant to uncover the genomics of purring crickets! Her first cricket grant!
March 2019
Former MS student, Ross Minter's second chapter is accepted at Current Zoology and will appear in a Special Column on Learning and Neurobiological Aspects Meet Sexual Selection. Check it out here: https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoz014
MS student Gabrielle Gurule-Small's paper is out at Global Change Biology - read about the life history consequences of developing in anthropogenic noise at https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14610
DU's news office wrote a nice article about Robin's recent NSF CAREER grant. You can learn more here www.du.edu/news/robin-tinghitella-wins-prestigious-nsf-career-award-crick-cats-research
February 2019
PhD student Whitley Lehto's second chapter was just accepted at Evolutionary Ecology Research! Check it out in the next stickleback special issue. Nice!
Lots to celebrate - MS student Gabby Gurule-Small's second chapter was just accepted at Global Change Biology and Robin received a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society!
January 2019
Congratulations to grad student Jay Gallagher who received his first Sigma Xi grant!!
December 31, 2018
We're off to Molokai, Kauai, Hawaii, and Oahu for field work. Mahalo NSF for the research support!! #purringcrickets
November 2018
AMAZING NEWS!! Robin's NSF CAREER proposal was recommended for funding! Let the research commence!
October 2018
We are delighted with all of the great press for our crick-cats! They've been featured in Newsweek, New Scientist, AmazeLab (USA Today), HawaiiNewsNow, and DU News. Read all about how we discovered purring crickets!
September 2018
Welcome new graduate students, Brooke Washburn and Jay Gallagher!
August 2018
New paper on its way in The American Naturalist! We've discovered purring crickets - are they crick-cats? Read all about it: www.amnat.org/an/newpapers/DecTinghitella.html
July 2018
PhD student Whitley Lehto won an award for her fabulous talk on parental effects on mate choice at Stickleback 2018! Congrats, Whitley!
June 2018
Honors thesis students Luke Sloan and Kallie Feldhaus and MS student Gabby Gurule-Small graduated this month. They're all off to bigger things and we're so proud of their hard work!
May 2018
Undergrad Anne Bowen and Robin both featured in a story about undergraduate research at DU - check it out! news.du.edu/undergrads-show-off-research-chops-at-annual-research-and-scholarship-symposium/
MS student Gabby Gurule-Small rocked her thesis defense! She's now our resident expert on noise pollution impacts on singing insect fitness. Way to go, Gabby!
The Tinghitella lab was well represented at DU's Undergrad Research Symposium this year. Luke Sloan, Kallie Feldhaus, and Anne Bowen wowed the judges! Anne even walked away with the top award for Research with the Most Impact! I'm a proud lab mama.
April 2018
MS student Jake Wilson and post-doc Dale Broder were both awarded grants from the Orthopterists' Society!! MS student Clara Jenck's kickstarter was fully funded! Summer research, here we come!
March 2018
Robin's TedX MileHigh Adventure was a hit! Read all about it at www.tedxmilehigh.com/waiting-dating-mating-adventure/
March 2018
Help MS student Clara Jenck fund her summer field research! Clara is crowdfunding her work and she's nearly 75% funded! Check out "Paddleboarding for Biodiversity" on kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/fishybusiness/paddleboarding-for-biodiversity
While you're at it, check out this feature on Clara's work in SUP the Magazine! www.supthemag.com/features/environment-one-student-using-sup-save-fish/
March 2018
MS student Clara Jenck was awarded the Society for Northwestern Vertebrate Biology Scholarship for her work on population genomics of red and black sticklebacks from WA state! Go Clara!
And, our students kicked butt at the 2018 FRSES meeting! Undergraduates Kallie Feldhaus and Kirsten Fetrow (both mentored by postdoc extraordinaire Dale Broder) won first and second place, respectively. Grad student Jake Wilson took home the first place poster prize, and grad student Claudia Hallagan rocked her talk, winning 2nd place! GO team!
February 2018
MS students Jake Wilson and Clara Jenck both awarded Shubert grants!
February 2018
The Tinghitella lab is doing a thing! Join us at "Waiting, Dating, and Mating", a TedX MileHigh Adventure at Invisible City on February 13th. This is a free (!!) event with food, drinks, stories about animal communication, and hands on activities with our research organisms. Fun! You can reserve tickets here: www.eventbrite.com/e/waiting-dating-and-mating-tickets-42253510387. Come learn about our research on animal mating behavior!
January 2018
MS student Gabby Gurule-Small's first paper is accepted at Biology Letters! Keep an eye out for "Developmental experience with anthropogenic noise hinders adult mate location in an acoustically signaling invertebrate".
December 2017
Several new papers published with grad student and undergrad co-authors! Robin's review of male competition and speciation is out in Behavioral Ecology, two case studies were recently published with the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, and we have a new paper on how competitive asymmetries arise out in Current Zoology. Check out the updates on the Publications page.
November 2017
Congratulations to MS student Claudia Hallagan who won 2nd place in the student poster contest at the Entomology Society Meetings! Way to go!
October 2017
The lab is off to the Entomology Society Meetings - visit with Dale, Gabby, Claudia, Kirsten, and Robin at our talks and posters.
September 2017
Welcome to new grad students Clara Jenck and Jake Wilson to the lab! Clara is investigating population genomics of stickleback populations that differ in breeding color and Jake is building on collaborative work with the Murphy lab on transgenerational fitness effects of advanced maternal age.
June 2017
The lab is off to the Evolution meetings in Portland, OR. Say "hi" to Robin, Dale, Whitley, and Gabby there! Robin is speaking in the Male Competition and Speciation Spotlight session.
Grad student Gabby Gurule-Small got her Sigma Xi grant!!
May 2017
Former MS student Ross Minter's first chapter on cognition and mating success in threespine sticklebacks was accepted at the journal Ecology and Evolution (co-authors Jason Keagy and Robin). Look forward to "The relationship between male sexual signals, cognitive performance, and mating success in stickleback fish". Available soon!
April 2017
Congratulations to MS students Gabby Gurule-Small and Claudia Hallagan who were both awarded Orthopterists' Society Grants this morning!
Robin and Gabby visited the National Park Service Night Skies and Natural Sounds Division to talk about our work on effects of anthropogenic noise on mating behavior and fitness in acoustically signaling insects. Fun!
PhD student Whitley Lehto was awarded a travel grant to attend ABS this summer and also received DU's Dissertation Fellowship!
March 2017
MS student Faith Lierheimer's first paper (her DU Honors thesis) has been accepted and published! Read Lierheimer and Tinghitella's "Quantity and quality of available mates alters female responsiveness but not investment in the Pacific field cricket" in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology! DOI 10.1007/s00265-017-2298-0
Robin had a fabulous time speaking about our research at the 2017 Founders Forum on March 1st! Check out the highlights here http://founders.du.edu/forum/ and here news.du.edu/the-personal-lives-of-crickets/.
February 2017
PhD student Whitley Lehto was awarded a 3rd place prize for her poster about parental effects on offspring mate choice at the 2017 Front Range Student Ecology Symposium!
Congratulations to MS student Gabby Gurule-Small who was awarded a $4500 Inclusive Excellence Award!
January 2017
Congratulations to MS student Claudia Hallagan and PhD student, Whitley Lehto, who were both awarded Moras and Erne Shubert Graduate Fellowships!
January 2017
Robin is giving an invited talk in the Spotlight Session on Male Competition and Speciation at the 2017 Evolution meetings in Portland, OR. Check out more details here: http://www.evolutionmeetings.org/spotlight-sessions.html
August 2016
Robin is guest editing a special column on male competition and speciation in Current Zoology. See cz.oxfordjournals.org/malecomp for more details! Proposed paper titles are due in April 2017.
July 2016
Like Father, Like Daughter - doctoral student, Whitley Lehto's research is in the news! http://news.du.edu/like-father-like-daughter/
July 2016
Welcome new graduate students!!! Faith Lierheimer (Tinghitella lab undergrad extraordinaire) is staying on for her MS, and Claudia Hallagan is joining us this fall too (co-advised with Shannon Murphy).
June 2016
Gus is making waves in the DU Magazine! Check out this profile of one of our amazing undergrads: https://magazine.du.edu/campus-community/countdown-commencement-ecology-degree-provides-antidote-desk-job
June 2016
Congratulations, 2016 Tinghitella lab graduates!!
(from left to right: Brian K., Robin (with Brooks), Faith L., and Gus K.)
May 2016
Three awesome undergrads are defending their Honors Theses at DU's Undergraduate Research Forum this week! Congrats to Faith Lierheimer, Brian Ketterman, and Gus Kitchell!
May 2016
Clara Jenck received a Summer Research Grant to study the epigenetic underpinnings of stress-induced parental effects on mate choice with PhD student Whitley Lehto! Way to go!
April 2016
Robin is putting together a symposium at ISBE 2016 on Male Competition and Speciation with partners in crime Alycia Lackey and Michael Martin. Check out our awesome speaker lineup and rsvp to attend at: https://malecompsymp.wordpress.com or http://tweetvite.com/event/ISBEMCSpeciation.
April 2016
Much to celebrate! Lab undergrad extraordinaire, Faith Lierheimer, was honored with the Turner Award from the Animal Behavior Society, which affords her an all expenses paid trip to the Animal Behavior meetings to present her thesis research on the Pacific field cricket. And, PhD student Whitley is at is again - she was honored with the Robin Morgan Award for her work with young women in STEM.
February 2016
PhD student Whitley's NSF DDIG was recommended for funding! Way to go Whitley! To our knowledge, this is the first DDIG at DU.
February 2016
Robin was awarded a Public Good Fund grant and a Society for the Study of Evolution Small Grant for Local and Regional Outreach along with DU faculty Shannon Murphy and Jennifer Hoffman to run DUSciTech - a STEM summer camp for middle school girls from underrepresented backgrounds at the University of Denver this summer.
January 2016
Robin co-authored a new paper in Current Opinions in Insect Science on complex ecological and evolutionary consequences of habitat fragmentation and habitat edges. You can find it here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214574516000080
October 27, 2015
Robin has a new paper out in Journal of Fish Biology with first-author Emily Weigel (PhD student at Michigan State) and Jenny Boughman (also of Michigan State). Congrats Emily! In this paper we demonstrate that although female sticklebacks adjust their mate choices plastically when mates are rare, they may not adjust reproductive investment. Check the paper out here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jfb.12793/abstract.
September 19, 2015
PhD student Whitley Lehto gave a great first talk at the Guild of Rocky Mountain Ecologists and Evolutionary Biologists this weekend!
September 18, 2015
Robin has a new paper out in BMC Evolutionary Biology with co-authors Chelsea Stehle (U of Nebraska) and Jenny Boughman (Michigan State University). The paper is called: Females sample more males at high nesting densities, but ultimately obtain less attractive mates. You can find a pdf here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/15/200
September 7, 2015
Robin's research on flatwing crickets was featured in an article on rapid evolution in Lateral Magazine written by Emily Gregg. Check it out here: http://www.lateralmag.com/issue-2-underground/the-fastest-show-on-earth.
September 1, 2015
Welcome to new PhD student Gabrielle Gurule-Small!
July 20, 2015
Robin and fellow Dept of Biological Sciences faculty member Shannon Murphy participated in leading a week-long summer STEM camp for low income middle school girls last week. Read a local newspaper article about the project here: http://www.northdenvertribune.com/2015/07/stem-camps-for-girls-provide-hands-on-learning/. The camp was held at Regis University across town. Next year we'll host on DU's campus!
July 1, 2015
Robin is headed to the Florida Keys for a RADseq workshop. Let the stickleback sequencing begin!!
June 22, 2015
Robin's first Data Nugget has been posted at http://datanuggets.org/2015/06/how-the-cricket-lost-its-song/! Check it out. Data Nuggets are a fantastic resource for K-16 teachers that began as a GK-12 Fellows' project at Kellogg Biological Station.
May 8, 2015
PhD student Whitley Lehto continues her streak of awesomeness with a Rosemary Grant Award from the Society for the Study of Evolution! This is a very competitive grant and we're extremely proud of her!
May 6, 2015
Undergrads Jolysa, Kyle, and Gus gave fantastic poster presentations at the annual Undergraduate Research Conference on campus! And, Jolysa defended her Honor's thesis and was admitted to grad school at CSU!! Way to go team!
April 30, 2015
Brian Ketterman and Clara Jenck were awarded a Summer Research Grant and a Pustmueller Fellowship respectively to do research in our lab this summer. Congrats!
April 16, 2015
MS student Ross Minter successfully defended his thesis today! Passed with flying colors and gave a spectacular talk. Congrats Ross!
March 31, 2015
Congratulations to PhD student Whitley Lehto who had two exciting events this week - 1) she passed her written and oral PhD qualifying exams, and 2) was awarded an Honorable Mention for her NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Proposal! Way to go!!
March 2015
Lab undergrad Gus Kitchell received a second PiNS (Partners in Scholarship) grant to travel to the Pacific - we're off to Oahu and Kauai to collect Teleogryllus for his Honor's thesis in June!
February 27, 2015
Robin is off to University of Colorado, Denver to give a seminar in the Department of Integrative Biology.
February 2015
Robin's research was profiled in an article called "Dr. Robin Tinghitella: Animal Mate Choice is More Sophisticated Than We Think" at http://www.datingadvice.com/studies/drtamc. It's a fun article written for a general audience that highlights how plastic female mate choice can be in response to things like female age and prevailing ecological conditions. A great way to share our lab's work with the public!
January 2015
Robin and Co-PI Shannon Murphy (also of the Biology Dept) were awarded a University of Denver Research Postdoctoral Fellows Award to hire a postdoc who will help us bring RADseq technology to our labs!
December 2014
Robin gave a department seminar at Colorado College. Great to see such a creative university!
December 17, 2014
Robin and fellow DU faculty member Shannon Murphy were awarded an Olin Faculty Development Grant to develop and publish active learning case studies for our co-taught Ecology course. The grant will allow us to support three dynamic, young female grad students this summer to collaborate on the case studies. Yahoo!
December 4, 2014
Congratulations to grad students Ross and Whitley whose first paper was just accepted at Behavioral Ecology. Go team!
November 3, 2014
Robin is headed to Murray State University this week to give a departmental seminar co-hosted by the Watershed Studies Institute.
October 2014
MS student Ross Minter was awarded a coveted position in the 2015 Teach For America corps! He'll be teaching secondary science in DENVER public schools next year. Congrats, Ross - you're going to be great, and we're glad you're staying in CO!
September 2014
Our lab spent the day skyping and chatting with 7th graders from Highlands Ranch, CO about behavioral ecology research in our lab. They visited our cricket and fish labs virtually and asked a ton of amazing questions. We look forward to visiting their classrooms next time! Here's a quick video highlighting our visit: http://youtu.be/xtlFoI9GCQo
August 2014
Robin and Whitley took on New York City at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology meeting this summer. Robin gave a talk and Whitley gave her first poster at an international meeting, highlighting work on the evolutionary loss of the stickleback's red throat in WA populations (co-authors MS student Ross Minter and PI Robin Tinghitella).
August 2014
DU undergrad, Gus Kitchell, travelled to Moorea, French Polynesia for collection and field work with Teleogryllus oceanicus field crickets.
May 2014
Congratulations to Jolysa Gallegos and Emrys Andromeda-Focht who were awarded Pustmueller Fellowships to conduct research this summer. Time to collect all the data!
May 2014
Faith Lierheimer, Gus Kitchell, and Kyle Robrock were all awarded Summer Research Grants through the Partners in Scholarship program at DU! Way to go labbies!
May 2014
Faith presented her poster "Female crickets raised in silence are less choosy in mate choice then counterparts raised with song" at DU's Undergraduate Research Forum. Nicely done!
May 2014
Ross, Whitley and Robin are on the way to Washington to collect 500+ sticklebacks. Wish us luck!
April 2014
Robin and Tom Quinn (DU Biology) were awarded a PROF grant to investigate "The Genomics of Rapid Morphological and Behavioral Change in Mating Signals". Let the RAD-seq begin!
April 2014
Faith and Robin are headed to the Big Island of Hawaii to collect crickets for a project on geographic variation in sperm competition and reproductive investment.
April 2014
Robin's new paper on flexible mating behavior in house crickets was published in Animal Behaviour - check it out!
April 2014
Whitley was awarded a Doctoral Fellowship for Inclusive Excellence for 2014-2015. Congrats, Whitley!
August 2013
Robin's new paper with coauthors Emily Weigel, Megan Head, and Jenny Boughman was published in Ecology and Evolution. It highlights how mate choice in threespine sticklebacks changes when mates are rare and time is short.
July 2013
Robin and Becca attended the Animal Behavior Meetings in Boulder, CO.
June 2013
Undergraduates Joey Fisher and Faith Lierheimer were awarded Summer Research Grants at DU! Congrats!