Presentations at international scientific conference part of six RU researchers' New Year's festivities

To ring in their new year, six Radford University students gave talks or presented posters at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) January 3-7 in Austin, Texas.

"The presenters had an invaluable opportunity to design, conduct, analyze, write and present research that makes a real contribution to knowledge," said Jason Davis, assistant professor of biology. "They got feedback from the scientific community and had a chance to network and learn from experts in their fields."

SICB fosters interdisciplinary cooperative research, education, public awareness and understanding of living organisms from molecules and cells to ecology and evolution.

"The research they have done makes them better students and thinkers beyond the classroom," said Davis, who with Sara O'Brien, assistant professor of biology; operates the Ecophysiology Laboratory in which the projects were conducted. "It's their work and they have been analytical and creative in producing it."

Ecophysiology is a biological discipline that studies the adaptation of an organism's physiology to environmental conditions.

Kristan Cale, a senior biology major from Virginia Beach, Va., presented a talk in the endocrinology of growth and development session. Her presentation of a paper she co-authored with Stephanie Nicholas and Davis was titled, "Interactions of major royal jelly proteins and juvenile hormone on growth and development of Madagascar hissing cockroaches."

During the four-day conference of over 3,000 international scientists and aspiring scientists at the undergraduate and graduate levels, five other RU students made poster presentations in sessions focused on cellular and biochemical physiology, invertebrate physical biology, stress, behavioral ecology.

Poster presentations were made by:

• Dylan McDaniel, a senior biology major from Radford, on stress as a modulator of immune function and sickness behavior in Passer Domesticus. Davis co-authored.
   
• Nicholas, a junior biology major from Radford, on hormonal interactions between royal jelly and a juvenile hormone analog on Manducca Sexta development. Davis co-authored.
   
• Kirsten Bjornson, a graduate psychology student from Forest Park, Ill., on exogenous corticosterone administration vs. an environmental stressor: approach behaviors in Passer Domesticus. Davis co-authored.
   
• Fiona Surette, a senior biology major from Winchester, Va., on impacts of daily corticosterone administration on nestling eastern bluebirds’ (Sialia sialis) age at fledging and parental behavior and corticosterone. Davis and Judy Guinan, associate professor of biology, co-authored.
   
• Laken Cooper '13, a Winter biology graduate from Radford, presented on habitat fragmentation and avian behavior: a 3-year study examining the underlying complexities of population number and behavioral aggression across habitat size and shape. O'Brien, Steele and Schroeder co-authored.