February 2025 ENT Student of the Month: Ian Jett
My name is Ian Jett and I am a senior Entomology major planning on graduating in June of 2025. I have been an Entomology major since the winter quarter of my freshman year. I initially entered college with the plan of going to medical school as a general bio major but I quickly realized that I wouldn't really be happy going that direction. I've had a strong interest in biology since high school and in December of my freshman year I received an email detailing the Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology and decided to apply. Upon being accepted into Professor Louie Yang's lab, I found myself quickly interested in the projects being conducted and being in an environment of passionate scientists and insect enthusiasts lead me to switching into Entomology.
Since joining the Yang Lab my freshman year I have helped on a variety of insect related lab projects. These include raising butterfly populations of monarchs, silvery blues, cabbage whites, as well as field experiments identifying monarch egg predator behavior and the effects of heatwaves on a system of oak trees, oak gall wasps, and jumping spiders. My personal research project I plan to finish and begin writing a paper on soon is about the effects of dead honey bees on the behavior and frequency of insect visitors on milkweed plants. In short, the reproductive mechanism by which milkweeds disperse pollen requires insect visitors to get stuck in flowers and pull out the pollen to transfer to the next plant. Honey bees often get stuck in some milkweed species and die on the flowers. I was curious about how the presence of these dead bees affects the behavior of other honey bees and any other insect visitors to milkweed. I placed dead bees on milkweed plants and collected video footage to compare visitor frequency and behavior during the last two summers.
Beyond research I deeply enjoy all of the entomology courses I have taken and frequently attend the entomology club meetings. I plan on taking a gap year during which I plan to find field research positions hopefully related to insects as well as improving my coding skills for data analysis. After that I plan on most likely attending UC Davis for a Masters in Ecology or Entomology, although I am open to many other schools. Beyond that I hope to go into conservation or environmental consulting, though I'm still just enjoying the journey and am open to many career paths. I am extremely grateful to all of the faculty and ecology students I have met and am very lucky to have stumbled upon such a strong entomology program at this school.
