At this year’s annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America’s Eastern Branch three students working in entomology-related laboratories were honored:
Meghin Rollins and Rob Holdcraft
Robert (Rob) Holdcraft
Robert Holdcraft, a technician and master’s degree student in professor Cesar Rodriguez-Saona’s lab at the Phillip Marucci Blueberry-Cranberry Research Center won the branch’s Asa Fitch award for this year’s outstanding Masters Degree Student. Rob’s research centers on the disruption of pheromone communication of Anomala orientalis (oriental beetle). Rob also gave a talk entitled “Analyzing oriental beetle behavior in proximity to pheromone point sources in novel attract-&-kill scenario.”
Meghin Rollins
Meghin Rollins, an undergraduate student in assistant extension specialist Anne Nielsen’s lab at the Department of Entomology, took first place in the student poster competition for her poster entitled “Do katydid feeding preferences gravitate towards parasitized or unparasitized brown marmorated stink bug egg masses.” The poster was based on a project she conducted while working in Nielsen’s lab in the fall of 2017. Meghin has been an Environmental Studies student at Rowan University for the last three summers.
Ciara Mendoza
Ciara Mae Mendoza
Ciara Mae Mendoza, an undergraduate student in associate professor Jessica Ware’s lab at Rutgers New Brunswick took first place in the Masters/Undergraduate Oral Presentation competition for her talk “Pantala flavescens: A molecular analysis of the panmictic ‘global wanderer.’” Ciara has been working on dragonfly and termite systematics in the Ware Lab for the past several years. Her work on the cockroaches of Guyana was published in Zookeys, and Ciara is currently writing up two manuscripts on dragonfly and termite evolution. She begins her PhD in the fall of 2018.
