Galloway Lab -- the dear and departed....

Effects of maternal mating on offspring fitness in Drosophila melanogaster
Nicholas Priest (nkpriest@indiana.edu)
In many species the act of mating reduces female survival and therefore lifetime fecundity. Nick explored the question of why females mate multiple times given these fitness costs. He found that mating enhances daughter fitness by increasing early life fecundity of daughters in D. melanogaster . He also found mating temporarily increases recombination. He is currently a post-doc with Mike Wade and Curt Lively at Indiana University.

Phenotypic plasticity in Geranium carolinianum
Daniela Bell (danlbell@indiana.edu)
Plasticity is the ability to alter morphology or physiology in response to environmental conditions. Patterns of plasticity often vary among populations growing in different environments. Daniela investigated the relationship between environmental variation and the patterns and cost of phenotypic plasticity in Geranium carolinianum. She finished her Ph.D. in 2004 and did a post-doc with Lynda Delph at Indiana University.

Local adaptation and gene flow in Lobelia cardinalis
Linda Johnson (lmkjohnson@cnu.edu )
Linda's dissertation research focused on the influence of non-local genes on the fitness of local populations of the same species. She worked with cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis), a species native to much of the eastern US that is also planted as an ornamental in gardens. Linda found that gene movement from horticultural to wild plants is likely to be common and that these foreign genes will frequently be incorporated into natural populations. However there is little evidence that foreign genes disrupt local adaptation. She finished her Ph.D. in 2003 and has an Assistant Professor position at Christopher Newport University.

Parental Environmental Effects in Campanula americana
Julie Etterson (jetterso@d.umn.edu)
In her post-doc work, Julie helped develop and conduct a study to determine environmental and genetic maternal effects on season of germination. This experiment is finally (!) coming to a close and we soon hope to have answers. She also initiated artificial selection on timing flowering in C. americana with the goal of evaluating how tetraploidy influences estimates of genetic variance. Julie is an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth.