News

April 23, 2024

First field trip of the season - successful!

Our first collecting trip of the season was to Green Ridge State Forest to catch silvery blues for our study of genetic patterns across our...

April 09, 2024

Alumnus Kevin Czuchara returns!

Kevin, now at USFWS working with DOD to manage habitat and species, is back to work on a collaborative project with Anngely, picking up his...

April 04, 2024

Planting caterpillar food

Lab members are busy preparing for this summer's experimental work raising butterflies. Recently, several lab members headed to a nearby...

December 23, 2019: Erin gives great RISE presentation on Baltimore Checkerspot project

Erin did our lab proud with the first RISE talk coming out of the Ries lab. Her project is looking at what is causing Baltimore Checkerspots to lose weight during heatwaves. Are they losing water weight or fat - and what might be the...

October 14, 2019: Mariana's recent paper is editor's choice at PLoS ONE Climate Forum

Way to go Mariana!! This paper shows that conflicting cues between day length, temperature and food quality can cause confusion for silver-spotted skippers about whether to enter diapause - one of the most important "decisions" that impact an...

September 20, 2019: The Ries Lab goes to the Climate Strike!

We cut our classes (luckily they were canceled!) and I pulled my daughter out of school to join the Climate Strike in DC! It was a beautiful and inspiring day. The crowd really showed the passion they feel for dealing with our climate crisis....

September 04, 2019: Mariana's diapause published today in PLoS ONE!

Great news for Mariana - her paper on skipper diapause was published in PLoS ONE. Way to go Mariana!

July 09, 2019: Big day for publications, not so much for field work.

This week ended a disappointing few days of looking for Baltimore Checkerspots in the field (both in central New York and western Maryland). But our lack of success finding the elusive Euphydryas phaeton was balanced out by two papers being...

June 19, 2019: Vaughn arrives in Whitehorse for the start of his first field season!

Vaughn the intrepid arrived yesterday in Whitehorse and is settling in at the field station in far-western Canada. Tomorrow he heads out to Fairbanks to pick up Carl, his field assistant. Vaughn is going to be traveling around the Yukon this...

June 13, 2019: Leslie attends Monarchs & Milkweed (M&M) meeting at Oaksprings Botanical Library

Anurag Agrawal of Cornell arranged a meeting between monarch and milkweed biologists. It was held at the lovely The Oak Spring Garden Foundation in western Virginia. We learned about research done on the...

June 04, 2019: Baltimore checkerspot article published!

A study on the Baltimore checkerspot and its response to heatwaves during different seasons as well as feeding on an inferior, invasive hostplant is now published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. This research, led by Mariana Abarca...

April 25, 2019: Edge effect article disputing common wisdom about predators is online early at Ecology

A study that is a collaboration with our own Biology Department's Gina Wimp and Danny Lewis (as well as Shannon Murphy at Denver University) looking at edge effects on predators just was published online early in Ecology! The study looked at...

April 16, 2019: Mariana gives invited seminar at University of Maryland

Mariana gave a talk in the University of Maryland's Entomology Department. She talked about the research she is doing on Baltimore Checkerspots. UMD has been a center of activity in terms of conservation efforts for the species. There was a...