Alice Hotopp will defend her PhD dissertation this Thursday! The presentation is open to the public, and the zoom link is here. Alice is in the Ecology and Environmental Sciences program, and she is advised by Drs. Kristina Cammen and Brian Olsen. She has been an affiliate of the Ishaq Lab for several years, as some of her work investigated the bacterial and fungal communities on feathers of several species of salt marsh sparrows, and she performed much of the data analysis on a study identifying bacteria that can be transferred by nemotodes to ants.
Alice Hotopp, M.S.
Alice is a PhD candidate in Ecology and Environmental Sciences, co-advised by Drs. Kristina Cammen and Brian Olsen. Alice is part of the Genomic Ecology of Coastal Organisms (GECO) research group, which studies the genomic basis of adaptation in sparrow species inhabiting tidal salt marshes along the Atlantic coast of North America. Alice’s research focuses on understanding potential evolutionary drivers of plumage coloration, such as plumage microbial communities, in tidal marsh sparrows.
Papers published with the Ishaq Lab:
Hotopp AM, Olsen BJ, Ishaq SL, Frey SD, Kovach AI, Kinnison MT, Gigliotti FN, Roeder MR, Cammen KM (2024) Tidal marsh sparrow plumage microorganism communities. iScience. 27: 108668.
Ishaq SL, Hotopp A, Silverbrand S, Dumont JE, Michaud A, MacRae JD, Stock SP, Groden E. Bacterial transfer from Pristionchus entomophagus nematodes to the invasive ant Myrmica rubra and the potential for colony mortality in coastal Maine. iScience. 2021 May 29;24(6):102663.
The Ishaq Lab 