Presented my first research talk to my new department today! Don't think I'll ever get over being introduced as Dr. Pratt 🤓
Field season is over :(
Last grad school paper was accepted!
Thank you so much for the suggestions, I'll reach out to both! I would definitely love to capitalize on someone else's bycatch!!!
That's a fantastic idea, thank you for the suggestion! I'll reach out to them :)
Live in Ontario? Love bugs and forests?
I’m a U of T Scarborough researcher studying microbiomes of wood-feeding wasps & moths—differences in natives vs invasives & roles in forest disease.
Catch & freeze suspects. DM with questions!
#Entomology #Microbiome #Ontario #InvasiveSpecies #ForestHealth
For the confused: being faculty at UND was a one-year interim position after the passing of my former advisor, helping wrap up his research and teaching. I'm so grateful for the experience and this postdoc is a natural next step to a permanent position 🤞
Excited to hard launch that I’ve started a postdoc at @UTSC! I'll be studying wood-eating wasps & moths in Ontario forests and their microbiomes! Big things ahead! 🇨🇦🌲🐝🐛🪵
Got my course evals back and my students were so so sweet??? Truly the best way to end my time at UND 🥹💚
Never beating the bug girl allegations 🤓Enjoy this Sphenophorus selfie from four years ago courtesy of Google Photos.
If you’re wondering what my plans for the four-day weekend look like:
Sometimes you stay up until 4AM trying to organize a dataset that’s been thrown into havoc by undergrads. Highlights:
1. a ND bee IDed as a species only found in the UK
2. SO many misspellings
3. a “bumble bee” that’s clearly a syrphid (look at the antenna, eyes, and vena spuria)
I'm a simple woman. In my next life I want to be a beetle with big mandibles.
I have plans that I cannot share with you right now because the haters will sabotage me
In this house we have beef with Watson & Crick 😤
Not me being phished by my university when I'm already at my lowest :(
crying in da club (one of my students wrote: "You are the type of scientist I aspire to be.") 🥹😭
I'm a bioinformagician 🪄🧙♂️✨(I figured out a pipeline issue that's been giving me issues for WEEKS)
Grad student: “my soil microorganism sequences are in!”
BLAST: Sumatran serow 🐐
Me: *googles if serows eat dirt*
A personal note: I'm the 2nd author on this paper, but the real star is my former undergrad mentee and best friend! ⭐️ Watching her grow as a researcher was an honor, and I hope she knows how proud I am of her 🩷
Implications?
✨ AGF’s ability to grow beyond their usual gut habitat could aid dispersal and host-to-host transmission
✨ This versatility could hint at exciting potential for industrial applications
We found that:
✅ AGF show robust growth at strongly anaerobic conditions (negative redox)
✅ Orpinomyces joyonii could grow (briefly) at +50 mV without cysteine
✅ Additional testing confirmed 4 other strains had some growth potential at higher redox potential
Redox potential measures how oxidizing or reducing an environment is. Negative = oxygen-free (like the gut), positive = oxygen-rich. We manipulated redox potential with cysteine hydrochloride 😮💨🧪
🚨 New paper alert! 🚨 Our latest work "Evaluating the impact of redox potential on the growth capacity of anaerobic gut fungi (AGF)" explores how AGF handle oxygen exposure and their growth potential beyond the herbivorous gut 🧫🌱
academic.oup.com/femsmicrobes...
If I had a dollar for every student who thinks plants take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide, I could afford a ~very~ nice bottle of wine to get me through this grading 🥴
Mourning the loss of the Researcher App today. It was so useful for keeping me up to date on publications in my little niche fields of interest. Definitely open to suggestions for alternatives!!!
Goodnight, sweet prince 😭
Nice! Ask for some of my genera so I can say they’ve made it out of Oklahoma 🤪
Bulbous AGF are not my friends, they’re like if fungi could be garbage dust 😭
My bestie sent a screenshot of this post and needless to say I have strong feelings about it 😂
bluesky bug facts >>> twitter dot com 🥴
