Welcome to the relaxed summer publication schedule for TWIB. Faculty are busy catching up on research and writing, graduate students are in the lab or out in the field conducting thesis and dissertation research. Of course, the post-doctoral researchers and departmental staff tirelessly work as usual all summer long. We have fewer students here, but the relaxed atmosphere makes for a special time for those who stay to study and/or to work on research projects on campus.

Dr. Greg Florant welcomes NIH and NSF summer research students, Vanessa Selwyn and LaSandra Ivy into his laboratory. They will be working on projects related to hibernation and obesity and presenting their results at the NSF and NIH summer research symposia in August.

The Biology Department welcomes the lecturers who are instructing in our Summer Session courses: Drs. Lisa Angeloni, David Garrity, Arathi Seshadri, and Matt Weeg.

Prof. Don Mykles was recently awarded a 3-year grant from NSF to study the hormonal regulation of skeletal muscle atrophy in crabs and lobsters.

Assistant Professor Colleen Webb was awarded a two year NSF-Ecology grant. Her project is "Trait-based approaches for predicting ecosystem response to environmental change: Empirical tests and model development." The work will be done with co-PIs Jon Norberg (Stockholm University) and Van Savage (Harvard University).

Associate Professor LeRoy Poff and graduate students Christine Albano, Julia McCarthy, and Angie Moline are attending the annual international meeting of the North American Benthological Society (NABS) in Anchorage Alasksa, June 4 - 8. Christine and Julia are presenting oral papers and Angie is presenting a poster. Dr. Poff is incoming President of the NABS for 2006-2007.

Dr. Greg Florant gave the keynote address to the American Physiological Society Explorations in Biomedicine undergraduate retreat in Denver, CO on June 10th,2006. His address focused on the physiological and molecular consequences of obesity.

Graduate Student Dale Richardson recently traveled to Cologne, Germany for an interview with the International Graduate School for Genetics and Functional Genomics and received a 3 year PhD position. His program will begin in September. Congratulations!

Assistant Professor Debbie Garrity recently attended the Society for Developmental Biology Annual meeting in Ann Arbor, Michagan, and presented a poster entitled "N-terminal variation in zebrafish calcium channel beta subunit genes"

Professor Mike Antolin travels to Trentino, Italy, to participate in a Workshop on The Ecology of Zoonotic Disease, 10-14th July.

Simmons, M.P. and C.T. Webb. 2006. Quantification of the success of phylogenetic inference in simulations. Cladistics 22: 249-305.

Lehmer, E.M., L.T. Savage, D. Biggins, and M. F. Antolin. 2006. Extreme plasticity in thermoregulatory behaviors of free ranging Black-tailed prairie dogs. Physiological and Biochemical Zoology 79(3):454–467. (This publication is part of Erin Lehmer's Ph.D. work, Erin is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Univeristy of Utah. Gradaute student Lisa Savage also contributed).