After a few tries, we finally landed a grant from the US NSF-EAGER program to study aspects of our arms-race model of defenses in leaf beetles! While most arms-race evolutionary models have focused on plant-insect herbivore interactions, Co-PIs Dr. Ken Keefover-Ring, U. Wisconsin-Madison, WI and Dr. Paula “Alex” Trillo, Gettysburg College, PA, will use this 2-yr award to develop sequence-based phylogenies of tortoise beetles to examine how behavioral defenses and chemical defenses in both adults (e.g. maternal care) and juvenile stages (e.g. larval defense constructions) work against enemies and impact speciation in predator and prey. The behavioral defense assays will be carried out at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Gamboa, Panama.
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