BEAR DOWN
UAPA
  • Home
  • ABOUT
    • History
    • UAPA EXECUTIVE BOARD & COMMITTEES
    • Operational Guidelines
    • Contact
  • Postdoc Life
    • Spotlight
    • UAPA Postdoc Handbook
    • National Postdoctoral Association
    • Useful Links
  • Professional Development
  • Events
  • Get Involved
  • Home
  • ABOUT
    • History
    • UAPA EXECUTIVE BOARD & COMMITTEES
    • Operational Guidelines
    • Contact
  • Postdoc Life
    • Spotlight
    • UAPA Postdoc Handbook
    • National Postdoctoral Association
    • Useful Links
  • Professional Development
  • Events
  • Get Involved

Dr. Shaun Davis-Department of Entomology

3/3/2019

0 Comments

 
Behavioral genetics is a growing field that seeks to explain how genes and neurons influence the behavior of an organism. Through a multi-disciplinary approach using genetic and neurobiological techniques, my ultimate research goal is to understand how organisms use their behavioral repertoire to enhance their survival, and to learn how these innate behaviors evolved.
 
For my graduate work, I focused on intraspecific aggressive behavior. Males of the same species will fight one another to compete over territory, food, and mates. This trait is found broadly across the animal kingdom, suggesting that it originated very early in the animal lineage and has been maintained and modified throughout evolution, but the underlying genetic factors remains unknown. We used the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a model organism due to the numerous genetic tools to alter genes or neuronal function. I found that co-housing aggressive males lead to an accumulation of physical damage to their wings and used this phenotype to perform the first mutagenesis screen for altered aggressive behavior, in which I identified two genes that were previously not associated with aggression. 
 
In my postdoctoral position here at the University of Arizona, I am branching out into the behavioral defenses of interspecific host-parasite interactions. Flies encounters numerous threats to its survival in the wild. One common threat is that from parasitoid wasps. These small insects inject a single egg into a fly larvae which, once hatched, develops within and ultimately consumes the host. However, flies have behavioral defenses to avoid infection from these wasps, and to cure themselves once infected. While adult female flies are not directly attacked by wasps, they do reduce the number of eggs they lay in the presence of wasps, which is thought to limit their offspring to wasp exposure. I am currently investigating the visual and olfactory systems to understand mechanistically how the fly senses the presence of these wasps. The ultimate goal is to identify the neuronal circuits from sensory inputs to behavioral outputs and understand how these circuits interact to regulate egg laying behavior in a complex environment.
 
In my time at the University of Arizona, I have been encouraged to pursue interdisciplinary research questions, not just from my advisor but across the entire campus. This is exemplified when my work on the olfactory system showed that flies not only respond to the presence of parasitoid wasps but also to other Hymenoptera insects such as ants. This lead to an unanticipated collaboration with Greg Chism from the Dornhaus lab to examine the evolutionary response to olfactory signals from the threats of other insects. Furthermore, I have worked closely with Dr. Diana Ferro of the Zarnescu lab to study altered innate behaviors in a fly model of frontotemporal dementia, resulting in a Center for Insect Science seed grant to advance our work. Finally, I have been awarded the BIO5 Postdoctoral Fellowship on my work of behavioral defenses against parasitoid wasps. These opportunities will allow me to broaden the scope of my research and mentor undergraduate students in the pursuit of obtaining a faculty position at a primarily undergraduate institution or a small liberal arts college where teaching and research experiences are passed down directly from professors to students.
 
Picture
0 Comments

    Spotlight

    Each month we'll feature a Postdoctoral Scholar and their research, sharing their experiences from the UA, life in Arizona and their research interests.

    Archives

    November 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    September 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    October 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    October 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.