We report on the most physically extremely specialized trematode soldier yet found, which also appears to be obligately and permanently non-reproductive, in a new PNAS pub that came out of Dan Metz’s dissertation. See the paper at PNAS, our SIO press release, and this Science news article for more details.
Dan wins outstanding TA award!
Congratulations to Dan for winning a 2022-23 Scripps Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award for his outstanding effort last year for our Parasitology lecture/lab class. He was instrumental for running and enhancing that class!
Anai defends her PhD dissertation!
Today, Anai successfully defended her PhD dissertation that involves great, novel work documenting patterns of parasitism throughout entire host-species ranges. Congratulations! Anai is aiming to keep working in the San Diego area, so we might be fortunate enough to keep seeing and working with her.
Dan defends his PhD dissertation!
Yesterday, Dan successfully defended his thesis, which breaks major new ground concerning colony structure and dynamics of trematode with soldiers. And, today, he’s off in his car to drive to University of Nebraska-Lincoln. There, he’s building on part of his thesis for a postdoc in Clay Cressler’s lab. Congratulations Dan! [Yes, he will be sorely missed!]
Ryan honored in new species name
Mizuki Sasaki, Osamu Miura, and Minoru Nakao honor Ryan by naming a newly described species of trematode after him: Philophthalmis hechingeri. Ryan had first recognized the redia and cercaria stages of this species from their first intermediate host snail in Japan in 2003. In 2007, he provided a description of those stages and gave it a provisional name (the latter … Read More