Archived news
Lab news archive
August 2023: Ruby O’Neill submitted her MSc thesis – congratulations on the achievement!
August 2023: Sarah was awarded a Distributed Leadership in Teaching Programme scholarship, so she will be spending one day each week working with the Future Learning & Development team on enhancing her Biological Data Analysis course.
July 2023: Katrin Clark has joined the lab as a Research Assistant, helping on kororā projects. Welcome Katrin!
July 2023: Sarah and Travis Horton have been awarded a grant from Genomics Aotearoa to generate whole-genome sequence data for paikea (humpback whales)!
June 2023: Alex Cox was awarded a Bioprotection Aotearoa travel scholarship! She will be presenting at Queenstown Research Week – stop by to say hello if you are there!
June 2023: Coley and Sarah presented research from the lab at the Evolution 2023 meeting in Albuquerque.
May 2023: Coley Tosto received travel scholarships to attend Evolution 2023 in Albuquerque!
May 2023: Juan Lee and Alex Cox commenced their PhD research with Sarah. We are very excited to be growing the lab!
April 2023: Coley’s undergraduate research was published in Frontiers in Marine Science, titled “The development of a quantification method for measuring iridescence using sexually selected traits in the Gulf pipefish (Syngnathus scovelli)”, with her co-supervisors Emily Rose and Heather Mason.
April 2023: Juan Lee was awarded a UC Doctoral Scholarship to do his PhD with Sarah, studying pipefish evolution. He arrived from South Korea and will be starting his PhD in May.
April 2023: Analese Fon has joined the lab as a BSc(Hons) student, co-supervised by Travis Horton, and is studying humpback whale behaviour.
March 2023: Alex Cox has submitted her MSc thesis. Congratulations Alex! Alex will be staying on as a PhD student.
March 2023: The team has had a paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, titled “The roles of sexual selection and sexual conflict in shaping patterns of genome and transcriptome variation”, with collaborators Bob Wong and Judith Mank.
February 2023: Emily has returned from 6 months living and working in Melbourne, Australia, with her co-supervisor Prof. Bob Wong. We’re glad to have her back in Christchurch!
December 2022: Sarah, Coley, and Emily attended the Australasian Evolution Society conference in Canberra, and all three gave talks about our research on pipefish. Reach out if you want to know more about our preliminary results!
October 2022: Sarah has won the University of Canterbury’s Emerging and Early Career Researcher Award! Read more about it in this press release
August 2022: Ruby O’Neill has joined the lab for her MSc, which is focused on parentage analysis and molecular dynamics of male pregnancy of the endemic ihe ihu roa (the long-snouted pipefish, Stigmatopora macroptergyia).
July 2022: The lab has published our first data paper! It is titled “Seasonal dynamics of faunal diversity and population ecology in an estuarine seagrass bed” and is published in Estuaries and Coasts. This is the first paper from Micaela Pullen’s MSc (completed in 2021). You can read the paper for free from Estuaries and Coasts. You can read Sarah’s summary on her blog.
June 2022: Sarah was spoke about the group’s research (especially the research on kororā, the little blue penguins) on Radio New Zealand’s Nights with Bryan Crump. You can listen to the segment as a podcast if you missed it live!
June 2022: Lucy Howell won the Best Poster Award at the New Zealand Birds Conference! You can view her poster here.
June 2022: Didi Daley has joined the lab to start a MSc on the population genetics of wide-bodied pipefish!
May 2022: The research team has received funding from the Brian Mason Trust to hire a summer student to work with the research team and our collaborators at Pohatu Penguins. UC students, reach out if you are interested!
March 2022: Fleur van Eyndhoven submitted her MSc thesis. Congratulations, Fleur!
February 2022: The research team has received funding from the University of Canterbury’s Vision Mātauranga Fund and UC’s Faculty of Science New Ideas Seed grant to support the collaborative research with Ōnuku Rūnanga and Pohatu Penguins, supporting Lucy Howell’s PhD research.
Januray 2022: Coley Tosto, who began her PhD in November 2020, finally arrived in New Zealand to complete the remainder of her PhD!
Check out how Sarah spent her time in 2021 in her latest blog post!
December 2021: Sarah was awarded UC’s Faculty of Science Emerging Researcher Award!
November 2021: Emily Beasley has joined the lab as a new PhD student, and we are also welcoming Jude van Houtte as a summer student! Starting in mid-November are two co-supervised students, Alexandra Cox (MSc) and Andrew McCabe (summer BSc student), who co-supervised by Sarah and Claudia Meisrimler.
September 2021: Lucy Howell has started her PhD in the lab!
March 2021: Lucy Howell’s first paper from her masters research has been published in the New Zealand Journal of Zoology. It is a review paper on using environmental DNA to monitor Antarctic vertebrates.
March 2021: Sarah has published a paper on the genetic basis of freshwater adaptation in pipefish.
February 2021: Fleur van Eyndhoven is continuing her summer scholarship research on pipefish behaviour in her MSc research. She has already filmed >200 hours of pipefish behaviours!
November 2020: Nicole Tosto began her PhD studying pipefish behaviour and genetics! She is currently working with collaborators in the US and plans to join the group in New Zealand in 2021.
March 2020: Sarah had three papers come out this month – a paper on changes in gene expression in response to estrogen in pipefish, a paper on a mathematical model of how spatial arrangements of individuals impacts reproductive success and a whitepaper describing the why, when, and how of computing in biology classrooms.
February 2020: Lucy Howell joined the lab as a Masters in Antarctic Studies student!
Check out how Sarah spent her time in 2019 in her latest blog post!
November 2019: Sarah was awarded a Marsden Award to conduct research on the evolution of sex-biased gene expression in pipefish, in collaboration with Bob Wong (Monash University) and Judith Mank (University of British Columbia)!
November 2019: Sarah received an Early Career Researcher Seed Grant from the New Zealand Antarctic Research Institute! The project is focused on developing environmental DNA sequencing protocols that can be used in Antarctica.
August 2019: Micaela Pullen has joined the lab as a Masters student! Find out more on the Current Lab Members Page
February 2019: Sarah’s new review paper with Adam Jones on parentage analysis was published in Molecular Ecology. Read her summary of the paper here and access the paper here
January 2019: Sarah wrote a book chapter for the Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior on the Quantitative Genetics of Behavior. You can read the chapter here!
January 2019: Sarah wrote a new blog post about her transition from faculty to postdoc
November 2018: Chavvah Freeman joined the lab as a Summer Research Scholar
November 2018: Sarah was awarded a Brian Mason Trust award to fund the lab’s research on the wide-bodied pipefish!
August 2018: Sarah was quoted in the New York Times!