Author: Adriana Beruvides Major: Biology
Handling butterflies is a large part of this research project and I had to learn the correct way to handle them!
My name is Adriana Beruvides, and I am a Biology major in Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. I also have minors in Psychology and Spanish and a pre-dental student who is currently applying to dental schools! Ever since I was a freshman, I knew I wanted to be involved in research. However, I was not sure the best way to find a research mentor or to figure out what type of research was right for me. Luckily, during my freshman year, I took Honors Chemistry II and we focused a bit of the semester on research. For one of our projects, we had to split into groups, find a researcher to interview, and then give the class a presentation about the person we interviewed. My group and I spent a good amount of time looking for professors whose research we found interesting, and we ended up emailing Dr. Erica Westerman who is in the Department of Biological Sciences. She welcomed us into her office and shared a wealth of information with us about her research. In the beginning of my sophomore year, I wanted to get into research, and I remembered being fascinated by Dr. Westerman’s work with butterflies, so I reached out to see if she had any spaces available in her lab. After a few months of meetings, I became a part of the Westerman Lab!
The Westerman Lab studies visual communication, development, plasticity, morphological diversity, and neurobiology using butterflies as a model organism. Dr. Westerman and I spent our first year of meetings reading over countless papers about butterflies, morphology, diversity, behavior, and mate choice so that I could better understand these butterflies and figure out what topic interested me the most. While reading each paper we would focus on the questions I posed and see if that led us to another paper for me to read. I slowly figured out that what interested me the most is butterfly mate choice and the changes that could possibly affect this choice.
In the butterfly I am studying, Bicyclus anynana, both females and males play a role in choosing each other for mating. I first decided that I wanted to focus more closely on the female butterflies. I also knew that I wanted to figure out if experiences that caterpillars go through growing up could affect their choices later in life once they are full grown. I had learned that socially raised female butterflies show an innate preference for males that have two spots over those that have four spots, but I wondered if females being raised differently could change this innate preference. My research will aim to find out if rearing a female butterfly in complete isolation its whole life can change its innate preference.
Butterflies are one of the many species that undergo metamorphosis. Around 80% of animals go through some type of metamorphosis or drastic phase changes at some point in their life. I think it is extremely important to understand how the early phases of an organism’s life can affect later phases after metamorphosis. There are so many species that undergo these large changes, that these findings could potentially be applicable to many organisms.
Once I figured out what I wanted to focus my research on, we began developing my project and speaking about what specific techniques I could use. We had originally planned to get me into the lab to begin working with the butterflies during my Sophomore year, but COVID had other plans. We decided to do things a little out of order, and I started writing my thesis at this time. I got a good rough draft of my thesis going and felt much more confident in my experiment and knowledge about the butterflies. I also spent some time during quarantine learning how to code and perform statistical analyses, which I will need to use after I collect the data from my project.
At the beginning of 2021, I was lucky to be able to attend the virtual Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology annual meeting. At this meeting, researchers from all over the world present their research and findings. They also answer any questions that attendees or other researchers might have. I had the pleasure of learning about many different topics, such as butterfly behavior, anesthetics in monkeys, and Tyrannosaurs Rex jaw muscles.
Not far into my Junior year, I was finally able to come into the greenhouse to get some hands-on experience with the butterflies. First, I learned all about the care of caterpillars, and the planting of corn, which is the caterpillars’ food. Next, I spent a few weeks learned how to handle butterflies using both my left and right hands as well as tweezers. Finally, Dr. Westerman taught me how to place butterflies into a position where I could paint them and then how to paint tiny spots onto the butterfly’s wings. I spent multiple days practicing this and soon found painting butterflies’ wings to be therapeutic.
At the end of my junior year, I finally had all the tools to carry out my research experiment. I have a wealth of background knowledge now and have my research project completely planned out. I also have come close to mastering all the techniques that I will need for my research. My senior year will consist of carrying out my experiment. I will spend most of my time breeding butterflies and performing mate assays. I am extremely excited to get in the lab next year to carry out my experiment, and to see the results of my project!