I was a bit swamped in the fall 2018 so am a little behind on my posts here. So they have all come at once! Please see below for all the interesting things that happened in our lab this fall, including awards, presentations, conferences, field work, outreach, and Becca graduating!

Based on Chris' NC Sea Grant fellowship award from 2018, his research was featured in NC Sea Grant's "Coastwatch Currents" publication. The write-up can be found here: ​https://ncseagrant.ncsu.edu/currents/2019/01/parasites-partners-in-coastal-restoration/

This research was also featured in an ECU story here: ​https://rede.ecu.edu/2018/01/29/ecu-graduate-student-awarded-fellowship-for-work-with-marine-parasites/

Becca was hooded for December graduation on December 14, 2018. It was bittersweet!! Becca is the first graduate student to complete her work in my lab at ECU. We will miss her! Congratulations to Master Becca!

Amy Fowler and I received funding from MAPAIS to set up a new project looking at invasive snails and diatoms in the watersheds of Maryland. Below are some pictures from our chilly survey deployments.

Becca successfully defended her master's thesis on November 9th to a packed and enthusiastic crowd! Her thesis title was: A Crab Trilogy: influence of parasites on interactions and interrelations among two introduced and one native crab”. We were all very proud! See images below.

Above is a screenshot of the newsletter with the information on Tim. You can find the whole newsletter at: ​https://aers.info/Newsletters. Congrats to Tim!

On Halloween (10/31), I was invited to give a talk at the NC Museum of Natural History for their #LunchTimeDiscovery series. My talk was aptly titled, "Invasion of the body snatchers: parasites that create zombies." It was a fun venue to talk about all the amazing things that parasites do from a biological, ecological, and evolutionary perspective! With a couple very cool videos in there too. The talk was recorded and if interested, you can watch it here: ​livestream.com/naturalsciences/dailyplanet/videos/182854188
Below are some images during the talk that were live Tweeted during my talk by @NorthCarolinaEE.
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I was thrilled to be part of the 2018 ICMB-X (International Conference on Marine Bioinvasions, #10) conference this October 16-18. I also co-led a special session on Evolutionary Biology of Marine Invasions. It was a fantastic conference, with excellent talks, conversations, and excursions to the Patagonia coast. I even was able to travel all the way down to the bottom of the world ("Fin del mundo") to see Ushuia, the Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego, and penguins! Becca also attended and presented on her research at ECU. Overall, it was an incredible experience. :) :) :)

Tim Lee, Kyle Swanson, and Dawson Wright represented our lab and assisted at "BugFest" this year, providing education and outreach on cool crustaceans, and the work we are doing on them in our lab. Great event! See pictures below.

This past weekend (October 6), we once again set out for the Pamlico and Neuse rivers to sample for zombie crabs (and other biotic and abiotic measures). As we had expected, the hurricane thwarted some of our efforts... a few lost crab condos and sites we could not access, but for the most part, we were lucky. We can also explore how the hurricane influences our trends. Pictures below! Thanks to Jessica Wells who accompanied us on the Pamlico portion and took these great shots! :)