30 Aug 2024 – Today is officially Maranda’s last day with the lab, winding up a great 3.5 years with us! She’s moving downstairs for a few months to work with Russell Wyeth, and then off to the University of Calgary in January to work and do a MSc with Jackie Lebenzon!!
28 Aug 2024 – Farewell to Anuradha, who finishes up her Mitacs Internship today. She will be missed!! Best of luck to her as she moves on to do her Master’s project!
23 Aug 2024 – Well done to Teresa and Bree, who wrapped up their summer projects today!
20 Aug 2024 – Feeling like a very proud supervisor with students achieving big milestones this week. Well done to Jona, who completed their MSc thesis proposal meeting today, and can now be called an MSc Candidate! And congratulations to Luke, who passed his MSc thesis defense yesterday!!
17 Aug 2024 – Well done to Kenechukwu (poster), Jona (presentation), and Sarah (presentation) for all excellently communicating their projects at the Acadian Entomological Society conference in Corner Brook, Newfoundland this week!
1 Aug 2024 – Welcomed in August with a lab bowling night!
19 July 2024 – Very nice lab visit to Maranda’s dairy farm after work today!
16 July 2024 – Publication news: The RNA interference review that Dr. Jackie Lebenzon and Jantina have been collaborating on has been accepted in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology A!!
7 July 2024 – Successful lab visit to a strawberry U-pick!! Thanks to Amber for organizing.
28 June 2024 – We had our first lab social of the summer – Bree was kind enough to teach us all archery!!
19 June 2024 – Today marks the day that Jantina makes the move from Vice Chair to Chair of the EDI Committee for the Canadian Society of Zoologists. Excited to continue to work with and for this committee!
4 June 2024 – Welcome to new PhD student Kenechukwu Ojukwu, who joins us from Nigeria and will be studying spruce budworm diapause! Kenechukwu is co-supervised by Dr. Andrew Lang at Memorial University.
4 June 2024 – Welcome to new Mitacs Globalink intern Anuradha Joshi, who is from India and will be in our lab for 12 weeks! Anuradha will be studying gene expression in freeze-tolerant crickets.
10 May 2024 – Congratulations to Luke Burton (presentation), Maranda van Oirschot (presentation), and Amber Gough (poster) for sharing their science at the Canadian Society of Zoologists annual conference in Moncton, NB this week!
6 May 2024 – Welcome to new summer research students Teresa Keenan and Bree Stewart, and welcome back to Amber Gough. Teresa, who is funded by a Biology department Chiasson scholarship, will be using genetics to identify the species of several winter-active pond bugs! Bree will dive into some cell and molecular biology of freeze tolerance! Amber, who is funded by a Scotia Scholars award, will complete her Honours research on the biology of ticks!
6 May 2024 – New pre-print! The Biol 381 class (Biological Research Experience) ventured into describing the cold tolerance of invasive jumping worms, along with our collaborator Erin Cameron at Saint Mary’s University. This was the work of several students, including past, current, and incoming Toxopeus lab members Victoria Adams, Amber Gough, and Bree Stewart. Congratulations!!
5 May 2024 – Congratulations to StFX students that graduated today, including Toxopeus lab members Victoria Adams, Maranda van Oirschot, and Sarah Rokosh!!
26 Apr 2024 – Congratulations to Brooke Vestby for finishing up an Honours thesis on the role of Supervillin in cricket freeze tolerance!
26 Apr 2024 – Well done to Victoria Adams for completing a successful Biol 499 Directed Study course this year, focused on drafting a manuscript of her Honours thesis and post-thesis work on heat shock proteins in freeze-tolerant crickets.
22 April 2024 – Jona Lopez Pedersen and Jantina are westward-bound to set up Jona’s MSc project over two weeks at the Great Lakes Forestry Centre in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario! Hopefully the spruce budworm cooperate…
8 Apr 2024 – Had a nice StressFX (Toxopeus lab + Rodela lab) end-of-term lunch to celebrate end of classes. No photos were taken, but we did manage to capture some of the current and incoming StressFX members at the Biology Banquet from a couple of days ago!
4 Apr 2024 – Congratulations to Toxopeus lab alumni Katelyn Lemay (first author), Kenzie Moore, and Paige Brown, whose research on the cold tolerance of apple maggot and rosehip flies was accepted for publication in Physiological Entomology today!!
2 Apr 2024 – Congratulations to Jona Lopez Pedersen, who has been awarded a Nova Scotia Graduate Scholarship for next year!!
20 Mar 2024 – Awesome research showcase today at StFX Student Research Day! Luke Burton gave a great talk on his MSc work on overwintering pond bugs, and Brooke Vestby gave an encore presentation of her Supervillin poster.
18 Mar 2024 – Jantina enjoyed giving a seminar in a colloquium with the other Research Chairs at StFX today.
18 Mar 2024 – Well done to Sarah Rokosh for submitting their revised MSc thesis! Next stop: graduation!!
10 Mar 2024 – Congratulations to Brooke Vestby, who presented a poster on Supervillin (a creatively-named protein!) in freeze-tolerant crickets at the Science Atlantic Biology and Applied Aquatic Sciences Conference this weekend in Halifax, NS!
22 Feb 2024 – Dr. Jackie Lebenzon and Jantina have been collaborating on a fun review article focused on RNA interference (RNAi) and how we can make better use of it as invertebrate physiologists. Pre-print is available!
15 Feb 2024 – Thanks to the folks at Acadia University for inviting Jantina to give a seminar. Very proud to share results from several Toxopeus lab members working on cricket freeze tolerance, including: current members Brooke, Maranda, Sarah, and Victoria; and former members Annika, Grace, and Robyn.
14 Feb 2024 – Congratulations to Brooke Vestby for giving an excellent Honours thesis presentation in the Biology Seminar Series today!
31 Jan 2024 – Jantina had the privilege of examining the (now Dr.) Robert Grgac’s PhD thesis in Czechia. Nice to visit Vlad Kostal’s lab group!
8 Jan 2024 – Welcome to Jona Lopez Pedersen, who joins our group as an MSc student this term! Jona will be working on understanding diapause of a forest pest, the eastern spruce budworm.
8 Jan 2024 – Jantina and the Toxopeus lab research program were featured in the recent edition of Muse magazine, a science magazine published for youths! Fittingly enough, the publisher is called Cricket. The magazine cover and a sneak peek of the article are below.
2 Jan 2024 – Jantina is westward bound (to Seattle) to present on our new publication (how temperature impacts diapause in the apple maggot fly) at the annual meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB)!
22 Dec 2023 – Closing out the year with submission of a new pre-print! Congratulations to Toxopeus lab alumni Katelyn Lemay (first author), Kenzie Moore, and Paige Brown, who did some great genetic work to wrap up this research on cold tolerance of two flies: the rosehip fly Rhagoletis basiola and the apple maggot fly Rhagoletis pomonella.
18 Dec 2023 – Well done to Maranda van Oirschot on completing a successful Biol 499 Directed Study course this term, focused on drafting a manuscript of her *cool* work on the cytoskeleton of freeze-tolerant crickets.
7 Dec 2023 – Celebrating the end of the winter semester in style with new lab sweaters. Thanks to Victoria Adams for organizing!
5 Dec 2023 – Publication news: Our study on how temperature impacts diapause in the apple maggot fly has been accepted for publication by The American Naturalist!!! The final version should be available in 2024.
3 Dec 2023 – Congratulations to the many StFX students receiving their X-Ring today, including Toxopeus lab members Victoria Adams (BSc), Sarah Rokosh (MSc), and Maranda van Oirschot (BSc)! That is some hefty hardware…
27 Oct 2023 – Jantina is happy to announce that she is joining the EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion) committee of the Canadian Society of Zoologists (CSZ) as Vice-Chair. Looking forward to continuing to contribute to this welcoming professional group!
27 Sep 2023 – Congratulations to Sarah Rokosh on a successful MSc thesis defense today!!
20 Sep 2023 – Jantina enjoyed travelling to Moncton NB to give a seminar at the Université de Moncton on the biochemistry and cell biology of cricket freeze tolerance!
18 Aug 2023 – Most of our undergraduates finished up their summer projects today! Best of luck to Katelyn, who is off to pursue her post-grad goals. Everyone else is sticking around in some capacity for at least a few more months!
14 Aug 2023 – Summer is coming to a close, which we celebrated with a friendly axe-throwing face-off with the Rodela lab!
1 July 2023 – Today marks the start of Jantina’s one-year stint as a StFX Dr. W.F. James Research Scholar. This positions comes with a reduced teaching assignment that will allow Jantina to put some extra time into the lab’s research projects!
5 June 2023 – A new pre-print is out! This study on how temperature impacts diapause in the apple maggot fly can help us better predict how warming winters will affect insect development timing. Happy to see this work (which spanned both Jantina’s postdoc and Eddy Dowle’s postdoc at the University of Colorado, Denver) wrapped up!
29 May 2023 – Jantina had a lovely time visiting Halifax to give an invited talk for the Nova Scotia Institute of Science. If you missed it, you can watch “Winter: A Bug’s-Eye View” on youtube!
19 May 2023 – Well done to Sarah Rokosh and Maranda van Oirschot for presenting their research at the Canadian Society of Zoologists annual meeting in (surprisingly sunny!) Saskatoon.
8 May 2023 – Congratulations to StFX students that graduated today, including Toxopeus lab alumni Grace Kaiser, Lily McInytre, and Annika Nobbe!
1 May 2023 – Welcome to the lab Amber Gough and Brooke Vestby, and welcome back to the lab Victoria Adams, Katelyn Lemay, and Maranda van Oirschot! Congratulations to Maranda for winning an NSERC Undergraduate Summer Research Award, and Brooke for securing a StFX Biology Chiasson Award. All will be conducting fun summer projects on wintery bugs.
7 April 2023 – Well done to Victoria Adams and Grace Kaiser for submitting final copies of their Honours theses! Very proud of the first Honours students to graduate from the Toxopeus lab.
5 April 2023 – Congratulations to Katelyn Lemay and Erik Bily for finishing up their Directed Study projects this semester. Excellent work by both!
23 March 2023 – Today is StFX Student Research Day!! Congratulations to all students that presented, but especially members of the Toxopeus lab cricket crew: Victoria Adams (poster), Annika Nobbe (poster), Sarah Rokosh (talk), and Maranda van Oirschot (talk).
13 March 2023 – Well done to Luke Burton and Sarah Rokosh for their presentations on their MSc projects in the StFX Biology seminar series today!
9 March 2023 – New publication! Congratulations to Trinity McIntyre, whose manuscript on cold tolerance of parasitoid wasps that infest the apple maggot fly is now available in the Journal of Insect Physiology.
5 March 2023 – Awesome work by Victoria Adams, who put together a clear and creative poster for the Science Atlantic Biology Undergraduate Conference in Saint John, New Brunswick.
9 Feb 2023 – Congratulations to Victoria Adams and Grace Kaiser for giving their Honours thesis presentations in the StFX Biology seminar series today!
6 Feb 2023 – One of our publications was short-listed as a finalist for the JEB Outstanding Paper Prize of 2022!! The article compares mechanisms of cold tolerance across development in Drosophila melanogaster, and combines some cool data from Phil Freda’s PhD and Jantina Toxopeus’ postdoctoral work (both with Greg Ragland).
24 Jan 2023 – A wintery topic for a winter time of year … Jantina gave a public lecture as part of the Antigonish Field Naturalists’ Winter Speaker Series today. What a fun, engaged audience!
20 Jan 2023 – Jantina enjoyed travelling to Fredericton NB to give a seminar at the University of New Brunswick on freeze-tolerant crickets!
5 Jan 2023 – New year, new pre-print! This work pulls together Trinity McIntyre’s work on the cold tolerance of parasitoids wasps that attack the apple maggot fly (host), along with work from our collaborators south of the border. Congratulations Trinity!
4 Jan 2023 – Welcome to Erik Bily, who will also be joining the lab to do a Directed Study project in collaboration with Arkadiy Reunov, our departmental expert on electron microscopy!
4 Jan 2023 – Welcome to Katelyn Lemay, who will be starting a Directed Study project on apple maggot fly genetics and cold tolerance this winter semester. Katelyn completed a course-based project with Jantina in the fall (Biol 381), and is excited to level-up to an independent project!
15 Dec 2022 – Congratulations to Luke Burton, who successfully defended his MSc thesis proposal today!
8 Dec 2022 – Good funding news! Jantina and several colleagues at St. FX (Drs. Rodela, Perry, Wyeth, English, Bishop) have been approved for a Dr. W.F. James Chair Equipment Grant to fund the purchase of some new shared molecular biology equipment.
6 Dec 2022 – Congratulations to Annika Nobbe and Lily McIntyre for both completing very successful Directed Study (Biol 499) projects on the cell biology of cricket freeze tolerance this fall semester!
9 Nov 2022 – Happy November news: Jantina has learned that she will be a Dr. W.F. James Research Scholar for the 2023-2024 academic year, an internal research chair position at St. FX!
15 Oct 2022 – Taking the plunge: Luke Burton gave his first conference talk this weekend at the Atlantic Regional Comparative Physiology workshop!
6 Sep 2022 – Luke Burton is the newest MSc student in the lab, co-supervised by Dr. Tammy Rodela! Luke will be studying the physiology of insects who overwinter in ice-covered ponds. Stay tuned for stories of winter field work!
8 Aug 2022 – Welcome to Annika Nobbe, who will be starting an Directed Study project on proteins that interact with the actin cytoskeleton in Gryllus veletis this summer and fall.
22 July 2022 – Congratulations to Sarah Rokosh and Maranda van Oirschot for presenting their research projects at the Annual Meeting of the Acadian Entomological Society in Truro, NS. The rest of the lab was an excellent support crew for the day!
9 June 2022 – Our latest publication was featured in Inside JEB! Click the link for a summary of our recent publication on how cold tolerance differences across development stage in Drosophila melanogaster.
6 June 2022 – Welcome back to Victoria Adams, who will be starting an Honours project on freeze tolerance in Gryllus veletis this summer.
9 May 2022 – Welcome to Honours student Grace Kaiser, and welcome back to summer research assistants Lily McIntyre and Maranda van Oirschot, who will be doing all sorts of *cool* cell and molecular biology in Gryllus veletis this summer.
3 May 2022 – Welcome to Brynn Webber, who starts her summer research on cryoprotectants in Gryllus veletis today!
2 May 2022 – Publication accepted! This work in the Journal of Experimental Biology on how cold tolerance differences across development stage is from a project Dr. Toxopeus worked on in the Ragland lab at the University of Colorado Denver, along with many talented students.
28 April 2022 – Congratulations to Kenzie Moore and Paige Brown for finishing up their Directed Study projects during this challenging winter semester! They worked to optimize a genetic method for distinguishing the apple maggot fly from its close relatives
27 April 2022 – Huge congrats to Sarah Rokosh for writing and defending their MSc thesis proposal today! And thanks to Sarah’s committee members Drs. Wyeth and Rodela for their thoughtful discussion.
7 April 2022 – Well done to Maranda van Oirschot, Trinity McIntyre, and Sarah Rokosh for their presentations at St. FX Student Research Day!
1 April 2022 – Excellent news – Sarah Rokosh will receive a CIHR-CGS Master’s scholarship starting in the fall. Congratulations to Sarah for obtaining this very competitive source of funding!!
11 March 2022 – Congratulations to Trinity McIntyre, who is presenting her summer research at the the annual Science Atlantic Undergraduate Biology Conference this weekend, after a successful presentation of the same work in the StFX Biology seminar three weeks ago!
9 March 2022 – Good funding news! Four students (two returning and two new students) have been selected for StFX Undergraduate Summer Research Awards to do research in the Toxopeus lab this summer. Congratulations to: Grace Kaiser, Lily McIntyre, Jay Turnsek, and Brynn Webber!
18 February 2022 – Robyn Walter gave an excellent talk on oxidative stress for her Advanced Major presentation in the StFX Chemistry seminar this afternoon!
20 January 2022 – New year, new preprint! A first look at our study that uses RNAi to show how different genes are important for cold tolerance in adult vs. larval Drosophila melanogaster. This wraps up a project Dr. Toxopeus worked on in the Ragland lab at the University of Colorado Denver, along with many talented students.
17 January 2022 – As we start the winter semester, Paige Brown and Kenzie Moore start their Directed Study projects! They will be using genetics to identify apple pest species this semester, which will help us better understand their overwintering.
20 December 2021 – Congratulations to Trinity McIntyre and Robyn Walter for finishing up their Directed Study projects during this challenging fall semester! Robyn did a fantastic job characterizing catalase enzyme activity in freeze-tolerant crickets, and Trinity wrapped up a manuscript draft of her summer project on the cold tolerance of parasitoid wasps of the apple maggot fly.
25 October 2021 – After a flurry of writing, Dr. Toxopeus and four other profs at St. FX have submitted a joint NSERC RTI application to expand our core molecular biology equipment. Fingers crossed!
7 September 2021 – It’s a new semester and a good time to welcome to new Toxopeus lab members: Sarah Rokosh (MSc student), Robyn Walter (directed study student), Kenzie Moore (undergraduate volunteer), Paige Brown (undergraduate volunteer), and Lily McIntyre (undergraduate volunteer)! And welcome back to summer students Victoria Adams, Trinity McIntyre, and Maranda van Oirschot, who will continue to work with the lab this academic year.
7 August 2021 – All four summer students have now wrapped up their summer projects in the Toxopeus lab. They all did such an awesome job!!
11 August 2021 – Funding news! The Canadian Foundation for Innovation and provincial partner Research Nova Scotia have awarded the Toxopeus lab close to $170,000 to fund scientific equipment needed to support our research program on insect overwintering and freeze tolerance.
20 July 2021 – StFX Alumni News published a nice profile on Dr. Toxopeus and her lab’s research in their summer 2021 issue.
16 June 2021 – Congratulations to Jay Turnsek, whose summer research is featured in StFX news this week.
10 May 2021 – Welcome to Victoria Adams, a second-year undergraduate who is joining the Toxopeus lab this summer to study the sequences of ice-binding proteins in freeze-tolerant organisms! Victoria is funded by a McLachlan summer research award from the Biology Department at St. FX.
10 May 2021 – Congratulations to Trinity McIntyre, whose summer research project in the Toxopeus lab is partially funded by a Chiasson summer research award from the Biology Department at St. FX. Trinity will be studying how the cold tolerance of the apple maggot fly Rhagoletis pomonella differs from its multiple species of parasitoid wasps.
3 May 2021 – Welcome to Maranda van Oirschot, a second-year undergraduate who is joining the Toxopeus lab this summer to study how the cytoskeleton of freeze-tolerant crickets! Maranda is co-supervised by Dr. Bill Marshall and partially funded by a McLachlan summer research award from the Biology Department at St. FX.
3 May 2021 – Welcome to Jay Turnsek, a second-year undergraduate in computer science who is using machine learning to better classify CRISPR sequences! Jay is co-supervised by Dr. James Hughes and is funded by an Ally Heaps summer research award from the Computer Science Department at St. FX.
16 April 2021 – Funding news! The Toxopeus lab has received NSERC Discovery Grant funding (along with a Discovery Launch supplement for early career researchers) that will help fund projects on insect freeze tolerance for the next five years!
24 February 2021 – New publication on the gene expression of a Beringian pseudoscorpion, with excellent co-authors from Western University.
8 February 2021 – Manuscript accepted for publication in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology! Our research on the diapause and cold tolerance physiology of the apple pest Rhagoletis pomonella is now available, with much of the work conducted by talented undergraduate students Lalitya Andaloori and Matin Sanaei in the Ragland lab at CU Denver.
20 January 2021 – Welcome to Trinity McIntyre, a third-year undergraduate student who is joining the Toxopeus lab this semester!
8 January 2021 – We can officially share the news! Dr. Toxopeus has received funding from Research Nova Scotia to study the incidence of COVID-19 in wastewater as part of a province-wide research project with researchers at St. FX, Dalhousie University, Acadia University, and Cape Breton University.
3 January 2021 – Today marks the start of the SICB (Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology) virtual annual meeting! Dr. Toxopeus’ research talk on the surprising interactions between low temperatures and insect diapause can be viewed here.
26 November 2020 – Thanks to WISE Atlantic for inviting Dr. Toxopeus to be a panelist in their “Stepping Forward” career workshop for female postdocs in STEM – lots of talented and motivated women in attendance who are ready to take the job market by storm!
9 November 2020 – Thanks to the folks in Mt. Allison Chemistry and Biochemistry for inviting Dr. Toxopeus to give a seminar today! It was great to chat with some chemists about the phenomenon of insect freeze tolerance.
31 October 2020 – Two big grants submitted this fall to fund research on insect freeze tolerance. It was a bit of a marathon but hopefully it produces results!
21 August 2020 – Can finally share the funding news that Drs. Toxopeus, Bishop, and Wyeth secured Canadian Foundation for Innovation and provincial partner Research Nova Scotia to buy a brand new confocal microscope for the Biology department.
28 July 2020 – Dr. Toxopeus received a Best Presentation Award for her talk on apple maggot fly diapause in the University of Colorado Post-Doc Seminar Series back in January.
1 July 2020 – The Toxopeus lab is now live! Looking forward to doing some *cool* research with students at St. FX.
27 May 2020 – Dr. Toxopeus enjoyed presenting her work (virtually, of course!) on insect diapause as an invited speaker in the Presidents’ Award competition of the Canadian Society of Zoologists Annual Meeting.
1 May 2020 – Lalitya Andaloori, Matin Sanaei, and Joseph Tucker presented their undergraduate research this week at the first virtual edition of RaCAS (Research and Creative Activities Symposium) at the University of Colorado Denver. They all presented great posters, and Matin went home with a People’s Choice Award!
6 January 2020 – New publication in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology. This one is on how the small cabbage white butterfly Pieris rapae survives low temperatures in cool places like Siberia!
4 January 2020 – This week Dr. Toxopeus presented recent results at the SICB (Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology) Annual Meeting in Austin, TX, partially funded by a travel grant from the University of Colorado Postdoctoral Association.
29 July 2019 – This week Dr. Toxopeus headed to Argentina to present her research at the International Symposium on the Environmental Physiology of Ectotherms and Plants, funded by a Sable Systems Young Scientist Award and a Company of Biologists travel grant.
3 June 2019 – Dr. Toxopeus has been invited to speak at the International Congress of Entomology next summer in Helsinki, Finland! She will be part of the “Physiological Responses to Environmental Stress” symposium. [Now postponed to summer 2021.]
13 May 2019 – This week Dr. Toxopeus travelled to exotic Windsor ON to present her research at the CSZ (Canadian Society of Zoologists) Annual Meeting, funded by a CSZ PDF travel grant.
27 March 2019 – New publication in the Journal of Insect Physiology on the nature of freeze injury in Drosophila larvae, available online.
20 March 2019 – New publication in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on how cryoprotectants function in cricket freeze tolerance! We were featured on CBC Radio about the study, which you can listen to here (on Fresh Air) and here (on All in a Day).
7 January 2019 – New publication in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology on the gene expression associated with freeze tolerance in crickets, available online.
21 December 2018 – New publication in the Journal of Insect Physiology on how crickets become freeze-tolerant, available online.
11 November 2018 – Dr. Toxopeus gave an invited talk in the Orthoptera Symposium at the Joint Annual Meeting of Entomologists in Vancouver, British Columbia.
The Toxopeus Lab 