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 here, 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. You can read more here.
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 
