Dr. Attardo leads a research team focused on developing deeper understandings of insect vectors of disease. His work delves into various aspects of their physiology, including reproduction, symbiosis, nutrition, and metabolism. He's also deeply explored the intricacies of transcriptional regulation, comparative genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. Recent studies investigate the physiology underlying insecticide resistance in mosquitoes and the interactions between wildfire-associated ecological changes and invasive mosquito physiology. The group is also developing a project focusing on an interdisciplinary collaboration with local Native American ecologists. This partnership aims to understand how traditional ecological knowledge and wetlands restoration techniques could innovate in vector-borne disease transmission reduction.

Dr. Bond's research interests include: Systematics, taxonomy, and evolution of terrestrial arthropods with an emphasis on arachnids and myriapods. We employ molecular, morphological, and ecological approaches to study questions related to evolutionary diversification at multiple hierarchical levels (populations – higher taxa).

Laboratory Research Interests: Molecular Genetics of Animal Behavior, Circadian and Seasonal Biology, Posttranslational Regulation of Proteins, Insect Genomics

Dr. Cornel's research interests include: Genomic studies on mosquitoes of medical importance. Particular emphasis on insecticide resistance genes and Anopheles polytene chromosome physical mapping.

My work focuses on pests of field and vegetable crops in California and the dynamic interactions that occur as we seek to manage them. This work includes research on plant-pest interactions, IPM, pesticide applications, insect ecology, biological control and invasive species.

Dr. Hammock's research interests include: Biochemistry and physiology of endocrine regulation in insects; development of recombinant viral pesticides; disruption of chemical mediation by chemical means and biotechnology; comparative pesticide metabolism in insects and mammals; metabolism of epoxidized xenobiotics; immunochemical methodology for detection of xenobiotics.

I am broadly interested in Animal Behavior, Evolution, Theoretical Biology, and Genomics. To date, my research has used a combination of experiments, simulation models, and computational biology to explore the evolution of advanced sociality, mechanisms of social organization, and self-organization. Chief amongst my results are that novel genes (orphans) are important for eusocial evolution and task allocation can work via a self organizing coupled localization diffusion process. I have also shown that colony fitness is often maximized when selection couples self-organization with other mechanisms, such as templates and recipes. In addition, I have written forward thinking conceptual syntheses on the evolution of the superorganism phenotype and division of labor. These syntheses present integrative biology perspectives on eusocial evolution and propose novel hypotheses, which I plan to make the subject of my future work.

Insects have eaten plants for around 400 million years. These interactions have given rise to most of terrestrial biodiversity. Over the past 12,000 years, humans have disrupted plant-herbivore relationships by building cities, domesticating crops, and changing the global climate. I investigate these disruptions, focusing on species that are of cultural importance, such as street trees, crops, crop wild relatives, and plants that support rare insect species. My work combines experiments, observations, citizen science, and biological collections to address key hypotheses in ecology.