1) Beginning during my sabbatical leave in 1997-1998, I started working with Wells students to develop projects that focused on courtship and mating behaviors in Drosophila, the common fruit fly. Two students studied mating and courtship behaviors in a curly-winged mutant of Drosophila, looking for changes in behavior (compared to wild-type flies) that might be related to the fact that the male uses his wings to "sing" a courtship song to the female. Having noted and documented differences in these flies, a third student looked closely at female receptive and rejection behaviors in an attempt to explain the increased mating seen in the curly-winged mutants.  Another student looked at naturally-occurring populations of fruit flies collected from wineries versus other locations to compare differences in their alcohol dehydrogenase genes. In 2000, one student presented her work (and work of another student) at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research; a second student's work was accepted two years later for presentation, but circumstances prevented her from doing that:

Wilby, E.P., Tidwell, N., Collmer, C.W.  2000.  Courtship and mating behaviors of Drosophila melanogaster: Increased copulation frequency in the female Lethal over Curly (Cy) mutant. Abstracts of the 14th National Conference on Undergraduate Research, April 27-29, 2000, University of Montana, #06.4.

Taylor, J.C., Collmer, C.W.  2002.  Rejection behaviors of female Drosophila melanogaster during courtship. Accepted for presentation at the 16th National Conference on Undergraduate Research. (but not presented)

Beginning last spring (2007), a current student began working on circadian rhythm in Drosophila, asking the question whether alcohol consumption could re-set the circadian clock that controls daily cycles of activity and inactivity in fruit flies. We purchased a Drosophila activity monitor that can automatically record, via detecting breaks in laser beams, the daily activity cycles of 32 flies in individual chambers at once. This study is currently ongoing.

2) Beginning in the fall of 2001, Professor Vawter and I started work on a new project, investigating courtship and mating behaviors in different species of the jewel wasp, Nasonia.  In collaboration with Dr. Jack Werren and Dr. Berend-Jan Velthuis at the University of Rochester, my students and I looked for genes underlying differences in courtship behaviors observed in two different species of Nasonia, both of which are found locally.  Several students did projects that involved video-taping and analyzing the courtship behaviors of hybrid progeny of these two species, looking for clues to the inheritance of behaviors that are species-specific. Two students collaborated in a presentation of this work at NCUR in 2003:

Venezio, T.A., Loero, A.M., Vawter, A.T., and Collmer, C.W.  2003. Courtship and mating behaviors of four hybrid-inbred strains of Nasonia wasps in comparison to the two parent strains. Abstracts of the 17th National Conference on Undergraduate Research, March 13-15, 2003, University of Utah, p. 235.

Two former students studied isolates of Nasonia that were infected by an intracellular bacterium called Wolbachia (in collaboration with Dr. Seth Bordenstein and Dr. Jack Werren).   It is known that infection by the bacterium can affect the fertility of wasps, both in crosses where one of the pair is infected and the other is not, and also in crosses where members of the pair are infected with different Wolbachia strains.  Two former students crossed wasps that had been originally infected with two strains (A and B) of Wolbachia but were since "cured" of one (infected with A only);  they were looking for signs of infertility that would indicate changes in the Wolbachia parasites within the wasps and thus suggest a role for these parasites in evolution and speciation in Nasonia.

Finally, two recent students explored the role of visual and acoustic signals in courtship and mating in Nasonia vitripennis.  They used various techniques for ablating these senses in male and female wasps and then observed and analyzed their behaviors during courtship in comparison with those of control wasps. One of these presented her work at NCUR in 2005:

Yun, J.J., Wahl, C., Vawter, A.T., and Collmer, C.W.  2005. Role of vision in mating behavior of male Nasonia vitripennis. Abstracts of the 19th National Conference on Undergraduate Research, Lexington, VA, April 21-23, 2005.

3)  I am currently developing new research projects for students in the area of genomics and bioinformatics, which will build on work I began during my most recent sabbatical leave (2003-2004).  Focusing on the recently-completed, full genome sequence of the pathogenic bacterium, Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000.  I have been working with others in the plant pathogenic community to develop new terms for the Gene Ontology (GO) for describing (annotating) genes in microbes that are involved in pathogenesis. We are just starting to use these GO terms in the annotation of three different Pseudomonas syringae pathovars that are part of an NSF-funded project at Cornell University, on which I am one of the Co-PIs (Principal Investigators). There will be continuing opportunities for Wells students to contribute to the ongoing annotation of these various bacterial genomes, work that continues in collaboration with colleagues at The J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD.