Behavioral Effects of Odorant Injection on Larvae and Eggs of Bicyclus anynana

Summer 2022 Research Project at the National University of Singapore

Abstract

During my Summer 2022 internship at the Monteiro Lab, National University of Singapore, I focused on the inheritance of learned preferences for host plant odors in Bicyclus anynana. Selected as an Amgen Scholars Program participant (4% acceptance rate), I performed fully-funded, full-time research under the guidance of Prof. Antonia Monteiro.

My project involved proposing and executing an evolutionary developmental analysis of food odor preference and its inheritance in B. anynana. I contributed to detailed studies on the transgenerational inheritance of learned odor preferences, providing insights into epigenetic inheritance mechanisms. Through my experiments, we demonstrated that larvae could learn and pass on novel host plant odor preferences, aiding in our understanding of insect behavior and adaptation.

My research helped reveal that B. anynana can transmit learned preferences for novel odors to subsequent generations. These results can have significant implications for ecological speciation and host plant shifts, highlighting the role of learned behaviors in evolutionary processes.

Additionally, I co-hosted the Asia Amgen Scholars Symposium, where I facilitated keynote speakers and presentations from four universities(the National University of Singapore, University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, and Tsinghua University) across three countries and presented our research findings.

(May 2022 - August 2022)