The Cambridge Entomological Club will hold its December meeting on Zoom this Tuesday, December 12 at 7:30 with Yui Suzuki of Wellesley College, as well as in person in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Room 101 in Cambridge. For those able to attend, we will have an informal dinner at 6:00 pm at Cambridge Common Restaurant with the speaker, followed by our formal meeting (7:30 – 9:00 pm) in room MCZ101 of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (there will be signs to help direct). The meeting will begin with club announcements, followed by a 60-minute presentation by the invited speaker and Q&A. Membership is open to amateur and professional entomologists. Welcome! To access the Zoom presentation, click HERE.

How will organisms fare in the 21st century as they face extreme environmental conditions and environmental degradation? Developmental plasticity is the ability of an organism to give rise to two or more distinct phenotypes in the face of environmental changes. Developmental plasticity is thought to offer new ways for evolution to shape an organism’s phenotype, but the mechanism by which this happens remains poorly studied. A classic example of developmental plasticity that evolves through natural selection is called a polyphenism where the same individual develops into two or more alternative phenotypes depending on the environment. In our lab, we have artificially selected for a polyphenism using temperature stress to generate a novel phenotype. My talk will focus on my lab’s latest findings on how our larvae respond to thermal stress and how selection might stabilize new phenotypes. In addition to sharing some of the challenges we have faced while conducting the study and how we solved these issues, I will also share some anecdotal observations of insects in Japan.