I co-supervise 3 students at three different universities, in three different countries. Here you will find a bit of information about them, their work, and links to their most recent publications.

Hanna Fischer:

at the Max Plank Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany: (link to her personal webpage):

She is interested in the molecular evolutionary mechanisms that underlie adaptation, focused on the interactions between plants and their specialist insect herbivores. Her research studies the evolution of species interaction and adaptation on a molecular level working on the Pierid butterfly hostplant detoxification gene called nitrile specifier protein.

Fischer, H. M, H. Vogel, D. G. Heckel, and C. W. Wheat 2010 Microevolutionary dynamics of a macroevolutionary key innovation in a  Lepidopteran herbivore. BMC Evolutionary Biology (in press)

Fischer, H. M., C. W. Wheat, D. G. Heckel and H. Vogel 2008 Evolutionary origins of a novel host plant detoxification gene in butterflies. Molecular Biology and Evolution 25(5):809-820. PDF ; Supplemental Material

Jouni Kvist:

at the Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland (link to his personal webpage):

Jouni is involved in an interdisciplinary project applying biochemistry, molecular biology, functional genomics and bioinformatics to ecological research in order to more fully understand the metapopulation dynamics of M.cinxia. Currently he is studying the kinetic properties of phosphoglucose isomerise (PGI), a glycolytic enzyme implicated as one of the potential genes influencing the population dynamics of M.cinxia. Jouni is also using microarrays to understand the global expression changes in response to thermal stress.

Cris Vera:

at the Biology Department, Penn State University, University Park, PA, U.S.A (link to his personal webpage)

Cris is also involved in studying the functional genomics of the Glanville fritillary butterfly, but integrates between bioinformatics and molecular biology. Much recent work has been devoted to developing the bioinformatic tools to handle 454 transcriptome data gathered from the Glanville fritillary buttefly, the results of which were recently published in Molecular Ecology. His molecular biology work has focused on the population variation and evolutionary dynamics of the alternatively spliced flight muscle gene called Troponin T.

Vera*, C., C. W. Wheat*, H. W. Fescemyer, M. J. Frilander, D. L. Crawford, I. Hanski, and J. H. Marden 2007 Rapid transcriptome characterization for a non-model organism using massively parallel 454 pyrosequencing. Molecular Ecology 16(11): 2371 PDF ; Supplemental Material

*shared first authorship