Current Projects

Caddisflies are a group of moth-like insects that differ from their sister group Lepidoptera primarily in spending their larval stage underwater. In this new environment, they use silk to assist in food capture, protect from predation and increase oxygen content. Likely as a form of increasing the production of proteins critical to silk, caddisflies have highly polyploid (having more than two copies of each chromosome) silk gland cells. We are using microscopy to study ploidy variation across development and across caddisfly species.

Millipede assassin bugs (Ectrichodiinae) are a subfamily of assassin bugs known for feeding solely on millipedes, a group of arthropods that use toxic chemical secretions as their primary defense mechanism. Previous studies of generalist assassin bug predators have found that they produce toxins specific to either defense or predation. Interestingly, millipede assassin bugs have 4 venom glands, where most assassin bugs have 3. We are studying the specificity of millipede assassin bug venom, as well as using transcriptomics to compare composition of their venom glands to other assassin bugs.

The primary silk protein in butterflies, moths and caddisflies is Heavy-chain fibroin, or H-fibroin. H-fibroin is highly repetitive and shows remarkable diversity even among closely related species. We hypothesize that unequal crossing over due to the high number of repeats has been a primary driver of this diversity. To test this we are conducting a series of trio experiments comparing H-fibroin in the Parental strain to H-fibroin in the F1 (progeny).