News

G3 has published our study on family-based selection as an efficient method for artificially selecting for changes in phenotypic variability. This was a computational study by Shraddha Lalla nd C that modled a set of ris Milton that foreshadowed an experimental execution of this this protocol that Shraddha led for the last few years. Stay tuned!

Lab outing to go apple picking at Russle Orchards in Ipswich. So New England, so fall. Lunch was a fried seafood medley at JT Farnham's in Essex, with views of the Ebben Creek marsh, cormorants and an osprey.

We are delighted to welcome to the lab Akhila Mudunuri, a graduate student in Prof. Katrin' Vogt's lab at University of Konstanz, Germany. Akhila will be with us for 6 weeks of experiments, career development and networking. Welcome, Akhila, we're delighted you're here.

Dr. Shraddha Lall successfully defended her PhD Thesis on the genetic control of behavioral variability in flies. Shraddha was a student in the OEB program, and conducted a powerful combination of computational studies, artificial selection and genetic mapping. And also set up the lab for a long-term experimetnal project on the adaptive value of phenotypic variability. Congratulations, Shraddha!

Dr. David Zimmerman successfully defended his PhD Thesis. David, who was co-advised by Aravi Samuel and Ben de Bivort worked on several experimental and computational projects related to sensory integration, individuality, reward prediction and cryopreservation. Congratulations David!

Congratulations to Madison on passing her Qualifying Exam to become an official PhD Candidate! Madison is co-advised by Ben de Bivort and Kanaka Rajan and working on network models that combine connectomic and physiological data to study the circuit basis of individuality.

We're delighted to welcome Madison Sneve to the lab. Madison joined in Fall, 2024 through Harvard's Program in Neuroscience graduate program. Madison is co-advised by Kanaka Rajan and she combines large scale neural recordings with dynamical models of connectomes to study the origins of individuality. Madison is also the lab's resident critter keeper.

Congratulations to Danylo Lavrentovich, who successfully defended their PhD Thesis entitled "Smell and survive: computational prediction of olfactory circuit activity and parasite-induced behavior in Drosophila." Danylo was a student in the Systems, Synthetic, and Quantitative Biology graduate program, and will be wrapping up his time in the lab focusing on one last project on Bayesian modeling of neural dynamics on connectomes.

Lab member Tom Alisch posted a preprint that he co-first authored with Lior Lebovich, a postdoc in Iain Couzin's lab. Other authors include Edward Redhead, Matt Parker and Yonatan Loewenstein. In this study the team examined how predictable future turn decisions in a Y-maze are ahead of the choice. They found surprising predictability far in advance of the maze intersection that evolves in distinct phases and bears signatures of working memory. Interestingly, this pattern holds in humans navigating virtual Y-mazes as well. Read all about it on bioRxiv!

We have posted a new preprint, entitled "Drift in Individual Behavioral Phenotype as a Strategy for Unpredictable Worlds" on bioRxiv. This study was led by lab alum, and now Colorado College professor, Ryan Maloney, and characterizes how individual differences in behavior change over time within an individual's lifespan. Ryan and his team discovered that this plasticity varies by genotype, is regulated by serotonin, and (through theoretical modeling) showed that it may confer advantages in fluctuating environments. This all suggests that the rate of individual behavioral drift may evolve as an adaptive trait.

Today was the first day for postdoctoral fellow Nick Polizos and OEB graduate student Bronwyn Miller. Nick comes to us from Mason Klein's lab at the University of Miami and is interested in the role of learning and plasticity in behavioral individuality. Bronwyn will be studying the evolution of host preference across the Drosophila family tree. Welcome!

Congratulations to Matt Smith (de Bivort Lab alum), who is launching his own laboratory as an assistant professor at Illinois Tech! Matt studied individuality in neural coding and individual differences in learning in our lab. In his postdoc with James Crall at the University of Wisconsin, he developed machine vision methods for tracking individual bee behavior. In his group, he will study the intersection of individuality, learning and collective behavior.

Thank you Stellate Communications for putting together a lovely new website, and accommodating all our quirks and large data files.

Carolyn Elya, assistant professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology was interviewed by The Transmitter, a neuroscience research magazine about her work studying how parasites alter the behavior of their hosts. She studied the host neural circutis that are targeted by the fungus Entomophthora muscae as a postdoc in the de Bivort lab through December 2023. Nice interview, Carolyn!