News

Amanda Wilson Carter accepted a postdoctoral research position in the lab of Dr. Kimberly Sheldon in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee. Research will explore the role of maternal effects in species responses to climate change using dung beetles as a model system. Amanda will also work with collaborators to jumpstart a research and outreach program with high school students in the East Band of the Cherokee Indians.

After traveling the globe, Valentina Alaasam accepted a MS position in the Department of Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno!  Valentina is working with Dr. Jenny Ouyang, an evolutionary physiologist who studies endocrine adaptations of songbirds in a rapidly changing world.

Congrats Valentina! We are so proud of you!

Photo credit (Parus major): By Francis Franklin (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

Dr. Ignacio Moore (BIOL) and Dr. William Hopkins (FWC) are offering “Tropical Ecology & Conservation BIOL 3954/FIW 3954 (6 credits)” in Spring and Summer I 2018. The course is open to all majors. The Spring course will be taught on campus.

During Summer I, the class will travel to Ecuador where students will traverse multiple ecosystems, from the Amazonian lowland rainforest to the high altitude Andes. Students will visit one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, ...

Sydney Hope, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation and a Fellow in the Interfaces of Global Change IGEP, recently received a travel award from the National Science Foundation’s GROW Program (Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide). The GROW Program expands opportunities for graduate students to engage in international research collaboration.

During Spring and Summer 2018, Sydney will travel to the town of Villiers-en-Bois in western France to work with her sponsoring scientist, Dr. Frédéric Angelier, at the Centre d’Etudes Biologiques ...

Congratulations to Amanda Wilson Carter, a former FLeDGE student and post-baccalaureate research fellow in the Hopkins Lab. Amanda successfully defended her dissertation at Illinois State University on Thursday, May 4, 2017. Her seminar was titled:

“Integrating natural variation in thermal conditions and maternal steroids into temperature-dependent sex determination”

Abstract:

The oversimplification of thermal conditions in both empirical treatments and theoretical applications has hindered our ability to understand how organisms respond to natural temperature variation. This is particularly problematic given that climate change is manifesting as an ...

From VT News

William Hopkins, professor of wildlife in the College of Natural Resources and Environment and director of the Global Change Center, has received the Graduate School’s 2017 Faculty Outstanding Mentor Award.

Sponsored by the Graduate School, the new award, to be presented annually, recognizes excellence in mentoring graduate students. Recipients are nominated by graduate students, and one professor from each college receives an award.

Hopkins’ research focuses on physiological ecology and wildlife ecotoxicology, addressing pressing questions in both basic and ...

John D. Willson, a former postdoc in the Hopkins Lab and current faculty member at the University of Arkansas, recently published a paper in the Journal of Applied Ecology titled, “Indirect effects of invasive Burmese pythons on ecosystems in southern Florida”.

Willson’s research paper was later highlighted in the online magazine, Anthropocene, published by Future Earth:

Invading pythons and the weird, uncertain future of the Florida Everglades

By Brandon Keim | February 8, 2017

The Florida Everglades are one of Earth’s biological marvels, ...

The Hopkins Lab will have 2 graduate research assistantship positions available in 2017

The Wildlife Ecotoxicology and Physiological Ecology Lab at Virginia Tech seeks to fill a Ph.D. and/or M.S. position focused on the reproductive ecology and conservation physiology of an imperiled salamander in Appalachian streams. The student’s research will focus on how habitat quality relates to parental behavior, reproductive physiology, and reproductive success of the eastern hellbender under field conditions.  The research will build upon our ongoing pilot work seeking to determine ...

The Hopkins lab was pleased to host Schuyler van Montfrans, a high school biology teacher at William Fleming High School, to participate in the the RET (Research Experience for Teachers) program this summer. This program, funded by the National Science Foundation, gives local teachers the opportunity to be immersed in original research, as well as a way to bring it back to the classroom. After participating in this program last year, we are happy to announce that this year ...