Lyman Briggs Teaching Assistants Receive Awards from Department of Entomology

May 1, 2019

Briggs graduate teaching assistants Nicole Wonderlin and Joseph Receveur were recognized at the MSU Department of Entomology Awards Ceremony on April 25, 2019. The students received an impressive five awards between them, listed below:

Nicole Wonderlin:

• • Roger and Barbara Hoopingarner Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Entomology
  • Robert R. Dreisbach Endowed Memorial Fellowship
  • J.E. and Jean M. McPherson Graduate Student Travel Award

Joseph Receveur:

• • • Merritt Endowed Fellowship in Entomology
    • Ph.D. Hutson Endowment Research Proposal Award

Nicole Wonderlin is a third year Ph.D student seeking a dual degrees in entomology and ecology, evolutionary biology, and behavior (EEBB). During her time at MSU, she has worked with a variety of LBC faculty, students and staff as a biology teaching assistant.

Wonderlin is currently researching moth pollination in urban environments. She wants to understand how flower-settling moths fit into local pollination networks and contribute to floral reproduction. To accomplish this, she is using methods drawn from the fields of pollination biology, network analysis and landscape ecology.She has spent the past six semesters teaching introductory biology labs. Wonderlin has always loved nature and conservation but became particularly interested in pollinator research while working with Dr. Alexandra Harmon-Threatt during her undergrad studying the effects of patchy environments on native plant pollinator recruitment.

Joe Receveur has been studying at MSU for three years with Eric Benbow in the Department of Entomology. He has been a teaching assistant at Lyman Briggs for two semesters, teaching LB144 and LB145 labs with Dr. Smith and Dr. Masani. He was drawn to entomology during a research trip studying a completely different system: sharks off the coast of South Africa. “While there, I was exposed to the numerous ways insects influence our daily lives, from food security to transmitting diseases,” said Receveur. “After that trip, I switched the focus of my research and have been lucky to have had the opportunity to conduct research on a wide range of entomological topics.”

Receveur is working on research that focuses broadly on insect-microbe interactions in aquatic environmentsand how they influence insect behavior and disease transmission. His research spans multiple systems, ranging from how aquatic microbes influence mosquito behavior in West Africa to how insects impact the early life mortality of sturgeon in the Great Lakes. In his research, he used field sampling as well as high throughput sequencing and bioinformatics to investigate how changes in microbial communities influence ecosystems and disease transmission.

For details about these awards, visit the Department of Entomology website.