Trop Bio Lab

Trop Bio Lab's Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy is interviewed in the final episode of the first saeason of the Animal Behavior Podcast. Floria talks about the ecology and evolution of social insects, and diversifying STEM.

E10: Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy on Insect Colonies, Flexible Societies, and Diversity in STEM - The Animal Behavior Podcast Episode Summary: In this episode, Amy speaks with Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy (), a Research Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Biology at the University of Rochester.They discuss the selection pre...

What happens to animal brains during and after aggressive interactions? Very excited to share work by Floria with collaborators from the Sheehan lab at Cornell University. We found strong neurogenomic responses in wasps, after social interactions and the establishment of dominance. Winners and losers initially showed similar gene expression at the end of an interaction. But after 4 hours, losers showed changes in expression levels of genes associated to early changes in social status such as aggression, worker-like behavior and reproduction.

Dynamic neurogenomic responses to social interactions and dominance outcomes in female paper wasps Social interactions have large effects on individual physiology and fitness. In the immediate sense, social stimuli are often highly salient and engaging. Over longer time scales, competitive interactions often lead to distinct social ranks and differences in physiology and behavior. Understanding h...

Super proud of undergrad Peter Aronson for submitting his manuscript! As an independent project in our National Science Foundation (NSF) - funded Solomon Islands course, Peter explored how logging and human settlements affect coral reef communities, finding different species responded uniquely to different pollutants