Department of Biological Sciences

A Luke Stebbins Undergraduate Research Symposium was held Tuesday, April 14, 2026, in Markin Hall MH1040
and MH1090. Fourteen abstracts were submitted. Presentations were organized into three oral sessions 
(judged). Approximately 50 people attended the event.
For the first time, we also held student presentations for the Research Internship Concentration (RIC) in 
conjunction with the Luke Stebbins event. The ten RIC students presented in MH1030 and were marked, rather 
than judged. The coffee break was a shared networking opportunity.
The event kicked off at 1:00 PM in MH1040. The first session featured 4 presentations from students enrolled in 
an Undergraduate Thesis course (one additional student submitted an abstract but was unable to present). There 
was coffee and snack break followed by concurrent sessions of oral student presentations, one in MH1040 and 
one in MH1090. All sessions were judged by three judges, and written feedback was provided to the presenters.
All presentations were very well done! Prizes were awarded to four students at approximately 4:30 PM:

Undergraduate Thesis (Session A):
First Place ($200) Brodin Fryzuk (Goater lab): Distribution of the land snail, Oreohelix subrudis, is 
associated with elevation, forest canopy structure, and soil calcium in the 
Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, Alberta

Second Place ($100) Ash Mosabeb-Omran (Burg/Patel labs): Determining potential therapeutic 
targets using RfxCas13d for Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus

Independent Study presentations:
Session B1 ($150) Rees Wilson (Stanford lab): Characterization of mixed biofilm formation by Shiga 
toxin-producing E. coli and the influence of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia

Session B2 ($150) Alex Frost (Flanagan lab): Contrasting land surface temperature in wetland and 
grassland ecosystems across an aridity gradient

The event was supported by the Luke Stebbins fund (prize money), by the Department of Biological Sciences 
(coffee, tea, water) and by the organizer (fruit, cheese and cookies).

Thank you to graduate student moderators: Bisi Amwani and Montana Wright.
Thank you also to judges for oral presentations: Veda Hegde, Milan Baral, Upekkha Abhayarathne, Nikeet 
Pradhan, Julian Ketler, M. Subhan Shafique, Vicky Garcia Rodriguez, Kathryn Knowles and Dianevys GonzalezPena Fundora.
Thank you to Catherine McCord for assistance with room booking and certificates for the event.
 

We had an excellent turn-out for the 2026 Biological Sciences Graduate Research Symposium Friday January 31, 2025. Dr. Rob Laird welcomed everyone with the land acknowledgement. There were 7 oral student presentations and 7 student poster presentations. Approximately 50 people attended the event held in Markin Hall. The quality of the presentations was excellent, and judges had a challenging time selecting winners. The Graduate Student's Association provided funding for the event and the Dean's Office contributed to the prize money. The Hoover lab provided coveted U of L honey for each presenter.

Thank you to all participants for an impressive conference!

Prizes were awarded to the following students:

$200 First Place - Oral Presentation:

Kathryn Knowles (Hoover Lab) – “Brood presence and age influences worker retinue response in queenless honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies"

$200 First Place - Poster Presentation:

Bisi Amanwi (Kovalchuk Lab) - "Sex-specific transcriptional responses to a high-fat, high-sugar diet in mouse skeletal muscle"

$100 Second Place - Oral Presentation:

Emma Neigel (McCune Lab) - "To mix or not to mix? Using phenotypic traits to inform seed sourcing for restoration"

$100 Second Place - Poster Presentation:

Matthew Cameron (Thakor Lab) - "An analysis of the interaction between eIF5B and its inhibitor LWW31, and the effects of LWW31 on translation"

Many thanks to our judges (Dr. Kim Stanford, Dr. Fairo Dekashu Foryuy, Dr. Neha Vaid, Dr. Robert Laird, Dr. Vicky Garcia Rodriguez, Dr. Dianevys Gonzalez-Pena Fundora, Brent Puchalski, Dr. Illimar Altosaar, Dr. Vinicius Silva Castro and Dr. Courtney MacInnis).

Thank you to the graduate student moderators, Bisi Amanwi and Veda Hegde.

Thank you also to the Graduate Student organizing committee (Kathryn Knowles, Julian Ketler, Bisi Amanwi, Chloe Brennan, Uvi Abeysekara, and Veda Hegde) who helped to put on the event.

In the southeast corner of Alberta, the Cypress Hills are a dramatic sight rising out of a sea of prairie.

Look down, and you’ll see another drama playing out. 

Ants are clasped onto plants and shrubs throughout the Cypress Hills Provincial Park against their will, waiting to be accidentally swallowed up by an unsuspecting herbivore. 

The culprit is the parasite Dicrocoelium dendriticum, a worm with an incredible ability to zombify its host.

According to researchers at the University of Calgary and University of Lethbridge, this parasite sits alone in the hall of fame of parasite manipulations because it is able to turn its control on and off — something not seen elsewhere in the world of zombies. 

Zombies are everywhere

Zombie parasites are quite common in nature, says Cameron Goater, a parasitologist and professor emeritus at the University of Lethbridge. 

“Almost every taxon [species] of hosts on the tree of life contains parasites or are infected with parasites that lead to manipulation,” said Goater. 

The goal is often to get from one host to the next. Take the famous Cordyceps fungus popularized in the video game franchise turned hit HBO show The Last of Us. Infected ants climb plants and die so that the fungus can burst out and rain spores down on unsuspecting ants.

Or the horsehair worm that drives crickets to commit suicide by jumping into water so the worms can emerge and mate. 

These examples and nearly all others in the animal kingdom end in the host's death, but Dicrocoelium is different because the nature of its life cycle incentivizes keeping the host alive. 

Dicrocoelium has what parasitologists call a complex life cycle involving multiple hosts. The final host is a grazing mammal like elk, deer or cattle. Adult worms live in their livers, and their eggs are pooped out and eaten by snails. 

In snails, the egg divides into hundreds of larval forms called cercaria. These are packaged in mucus and coughed out as a slime ball. (That is the official term.) Slime balls are then eaten by ants, and all but one cercaria go to the abdomen, while a single "brainworm" cozies up next to the ant's brain. 

This is where the challenge begins.