Adriana Beruvides, Biology Pre-Dental Student
Author: Adriana Beruvides | Majors: Psychology and Spanish
My name is Adriana Beruvides, and I am a biology major with Spanish and psychology minors. I am a student in the William J. Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences entering into my last semester of research. My research mentor is Dr. Erica Westerman of the Department of Biological sciences. I am also a pre-dental student and was accepted to 10 dental schools last semester. After I graduate, I will be attending Texas A&M School of Dentistry.
My research project uses butterflies, specifically Bicyclus anynana, to discover if rearing environment will play a role in a females mate choice later in life. I’m sure most of us know from early science classes, or watching TV as a kid, that butterflies go through a series of changes called metamorphosis to transform from a caterpillar to a pupa to a butterfly. What you might not realize however, is that over 80% of species go through some sort of metamorphosis, or drastic phase changes during life. We know that juvenile interactions can influence adult behavior in species that don’t go through metamorphosis, but we know very little about how the early stages of life in animals who go through metamorphosis can affect their choices later in life. This could shine a light on how juvenile interactions affect later decisions in many of the species that undergo metamorphosis.
\As a freshman I always knew that I wanted to be involved in hands-on research, but I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do. When I started thinking about research, I remembered someone who spoke about butterfly research at my biology orientation freshman year, Dr. Erica Westerman, and I decided to contact her. She kindly welcomed me into her office, and soon her lab. We spent months reading over research papers so that I could decide what type of research project I wanted to do. I was drawn to the mate choice papers and was very curious to see what variables we could change that might change the mate choice outcome. I also read another one of her student’s papers about how a female butterfly raised in isolation had a very different brain than one raised socially, and this led me to formulate my research idea. I will be seeing if female butterflies raised in isolation will chose males with a different number of spots than what they usually would have chosen if they had been raised socially. Dr. Westerman has played a large role in my research. Although she gave me the freedom to form my own research project, she has been by me every step of the process, such as figuring out the details of my project and teaching me how to handle, paint, and take care of the butterflies
Although I have been working with Dr. Westerman since the beginning of my freshman year, last semester was my first semester in the lab getting to work hands-on with the butterflies. A big challenge that I have faced with my research is COVID. I wanted to get into the lab at the end of my sophomore year, but COVID did not allow that. Due to COVID, we had to push that back by almost a full year, but I still was able to get other research-related things done during that time. We decided to go ahead and do some things that I usually wouldn’t have done until the end of my senior year, such as starting to write my thesis and learning how to code. Another challenge I faced was the learning curve of all the new things I had to learn to do in the butterfly lab. I had to learn how to handle butterflies, sex pupae, plant corn, set up a mate choice assay, and paint spots on butterflies’ wings. It was a lot to learn, but now I am comfortable with everything and love being in the butterfly greenhouse every day.
I was able to attend The Science of Integrative and Comparative Biology conference virtually in 2021. This conference let me hear about research from all over the world and about all different kinds of topics. I loved this conference and will hopefully be able to attend again this year. As of my last semester, I will just be continuing to collect data points for my project. My last semester will be full of time in the lab and touching up my thesis. After I graduate, I will be heading to Dallas to start dental school!