The Sweet Lab
Lab News
February 2023
New paper out in G3! Genome assembly of an individual louse using PacBio HiFi and TellSeq data (along with its symbiont and mitogenome)
January 2023
Undergraduate students Joe, Paige, and Salma have started working on research projects in the lab! All three students shadowed in the lab during the Fall semester, and we are thrilled have them become more involved!
December 2022
Mikayla was awarded a SURF award from the Arkansas Department of Higher Education for the Spring 2023 semester! She will be working on DNA barcoding approaches for arthropods in northeast Arkansas. Congrats Mikayla!
October 2022
Alex and Paige presented their research at the Association of Field Ornithologists Meeting in Plymouth, MA
Congrats to Alex for receiving an Arkansas Audubon Society Trust Grant! The award will go towards his work on Loggerhead kingbirds.
August 2022
Paige has officially started as an M.S. student in the lab!
Drew attended and co-organized a symposium on host-symbiont coevolution at the ESEB meeting in Prague, Czech Republic.
A new paper is out (with David Stanford-Beale) in Southeastern Naturalist. New records of thrips from birds!
July 2022
Congrats to Paige for receiving an Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Conservation Scholarship!
Drew presented his work on louse mitogenomes at the International Congress of Entomology in Helsinki, Finland.
Our new paper on louse mitogenomes is out in Communications Biology! You can read the Open Access article here.
June 2022
Alex and Paige presented their research at the American Ornithological Society and Birds Caribbean Joint Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Alex spent two weeks in the field collecting blood and lice from several species of Kingbirds in Arizona and Oklahoma.
May 2022
Congrats to Alex for receiving a Graduate Student Research Award from the Society of Systematic Biologists! He will use the award to sequence genomes of Loggerhead kingbirds and their ectoparasites.
Alex and Drew conducted a week of field work (along with Em Donahue and Than Boves) in the Cayman Islands collecting blood and parasite samples from kingbirds and ground doves.
Alex and a Loggerhead Kingbird (Tyrannus caudifasciatus)
Alex and Em measure a Loggerhead Kingbird
Common Ground Dove (Columbina passerina)
Welcome to the lab Callie Beaird-Campbell! Callie is working under an ABI Summer Internship to research duck lice and insect mites.
April 2022
Alex and Paige presented their research at the CREAT@ASTATE research symposium at Arkansas State. Congrats to Alex for winning the Best Graduate Student Poster Award!
March 2022
Congrats to Alex for receiving a Chapman Research Grant from the American Museum of Natural History! He will use the award to study population genetics of Loggerhead kingbirds in the Caribbean.
Alex, Paige, and Drew presented their research at the Association of Southeastern Biologists Annual Meeting in Little Rock, AR. Congrats to Paige for her Outstanding Student Poster Award!
The lab at ASB in Little Rock
January 2022
Welcome to the lab undergraduate students Jasmine and Mikayla! They will be working on identification and genetics of mites that parasitize insects.
Congrats to Paige for receiving a SURF undergraduate research fellowship from the Arkansas Department of Higher Education! Paige will use the award to study genetic diversity of lice she collected from birds in Arkansas.