On April 23 – 25, 2019, Marianne Davenport, Department of Integrative Biology graduate student, in Dr. Gregory Ragland’s lab, presented her research at the 69th Western Forest Insect Work Conference in Anchorage, Alaska. The title of her poster was “Variability in Adult Reproductive Diapause of the Spruce Beetle” and co-authors included Manaal K. Dalwadi (University of Colorado Denver), Barbara J. Bentz (USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station) and Gregory J. Ragland (University of Colorado Denver). Her work found that indeed, a small but statistically significant proportion of beetles can avert adult diapause and produce viable eggs without chilling, a trait that could potentially evolve and cause more rapid population growth. Warming temperatures could play a more considerable role in shifting population dynamics than simply a change from semi- to univoltinism.
While at the conference Marianne was excited to get to see an iceberg that had calved the night before.