2024
Fall
Max successfully defended his dissertation, “The effects of leaf litter management practices on overwintering insect communities and ecosystem function: Impacts and applications in residential landscapes." Congratulations, Max! Dr. Ferlauto will continue his work as the Maryland State Entomologist through the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Heritage Program.
Our work on urban trees in Baltimore this summer was featured in an article by UMD’s Division of Research.
Eva, Karin, and Kelsey attended the Baltimore Ecosystem Study’s Annual Meeting where Maggie Schaefer presented a poster, “Does a history of redlining or higher urban temperatures across Baltimore neighborhoods affect young street tree health?”
Summer
Karin earned tenure and is now Associate Professor!! It’s a well-deserved promotion - and it’s also nice to have cleared a big administrative hurdle :)
Maggie Schaefer joined the lab! Maggie will be a Master’s student in the fall, and this summer she helped immensely with our Baltimore fieldwork.
Kelsey gave extension talks to both the Baltimore County and the Howard County Master Gardeners about the importance of moths.
Karin did an IPM walk with Baltimore City Forestry (Tree Baltimore) and a Master Naturalist entomology training in Frederick.
We sampled caterpillars at BiodiversiTREE for (perhaps) the last time! Many of the tree species are getting so tall that we can’t reach them anymore.
Brendan presented a short talk, “Abiotic stressors and biotic interactions shape rhizobia-plant interactions in agricultural systems” at the North American Symbiotic Nitrogen Fixation Conference in Vermont.
Eva finished fieldwork for her Master’s degree with insect sampling and leaf traits on red and Norway maples around Baltimore.
Anne-Lucie Pierre joined the lab as a summer intern through the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program. Read more about her experience here! Sophie McCloskey also joined the lab. She fulfilled the internship requirement for her degree through Plant Sciences and Landscape Architecture this summer (and wrote a blog about it) and will be staying on to work part time with us this fall.
Kelsey and Anne took the UMD Insect Zoo to Pollinator Fest at the Howard County Conservancy.
The lab was awarded two new grants, Grand Challenges (UMD) and McIntire-Stennis (USDA-NIFA), which will help fund our research on urban trees in Baltimore City.
Maggie Lin illustrated two new infographics featuring Max’s leaf litter research. Check them out on our blog.
Spring
Nicole was awarded the Ernest N. Cory Undergraduate Scholarship for spring 2024!
We met for our annual lab retreat in January. Winter weather prevented us from going to the mountains this year, but we still enjoyed our time together and went for a hike.
In April Eva gave a talk, titled “Does genetic relatedness or management context drive tree-associated insect communities in Baltimore city?” at the Mid-Atlantic Ecological Society of America meeting in Kutztown, PA.
Maggie Lin joined the lab and started work illustrating the different life stages of one of our common caterpillars, the Wavy-lined prominent.
2023
Fall
Kristin defended her Master’s Thesis, “A Good Neighborhood to Raise a Brood: Tree diversity reduces cicada oviposition and tree response.” Congrats, Kristin! She is now working at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in DC.
Several lab members gave presentations at the Entomology Society of America’s annual meeting at National Harbor, MD:
Kelsey’s poster, “Caterpillar recruitment in response to tree diversity in an experimental forest”
Brendan’s talk, “Impacts of rhizobia diversity on soybean resistance to herbivory and drought stress”
Karin’s talk, “Integrating the historical legacy of redlining on street tree communities into current IPM and tree planting efforts in cities“
Max’s talk, “Conserving overwintering insect communities through landscaping techniques“
Brendan and Karin taught BSCI 497, Plant-Insect Interactions.
Max finished fieldwork and started working as the Maryland State Entomologist through the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Heritage Program.
Max gave an extension talk to the Howard County Master Gardeners and was interviewed by Washingtonian Magazine and Maryland Today about the importance of leaving leaf litter in residential areas.
Kelsey and Karin contributed to the Herbivory Variability Network’s first paper, “Plant size, latitude, and phylogeny explain within-population variability in herbivory,” which was published in Science!
Kelsey gave an extension talk to the Baltimore and Harford County Bay-wise Master Gardeners entitled “Insects: Our Most Under-Appreciated Neighbors”
Summer
Lab folks have been working very hard this summer on so many projects!
Brendan and Nicole are currently harvesting and collecting nodules from a 700+ plant soybean greenhouse study manipulating drought, insect herbivory, and rhizobial diversity!
Eva and Yasmine have been sampling insects from Baltimore maple trees from different management types and genetic groups and measuring tree traits from the BiodiversiTREE experiment!
Max and Justine have sent off over 700 lepidoptera specimens for DNA barcoding from the emergence traps positioned over autumn leaf management manipulation plots and a last year of treatments are underway to measure how this alters soil C and decomposition.
Kelsey and Karin just wrapped up the 6th year of caterpillar sampling in the biodiversiTREE experiment and sampled true bugs as well as part of the lab’s NSF collaborative grant.
Kristin represented at the Entomological Collections Workshop in Ohio
Lauren said farewell after 3 years as an amazing postdoc to start as an assistant professor at Kenyon College- we look forward to seeing awesome things out of her lab!
Busy but fun- we will have a LOT of data to analyze this fall!
Winter
We drove down to Virginia for our second annual Winter Lab Retreat!
Karin was interviewed on NPR’s Science Friday podcast about her paper on the ecological impacts of historical redlining in Baltimore
2022
Fall
Kristin helped the USDA Systematic Entomology Lab and the Smithsonian Museum Support Center to move part of the national insect collection housed at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.
Karin received the Entomological Society of America's Early Career Professional Research Award
Max received the “Get Bugged” Michael J. Raupp Extension Award, which promotes and recognizes contributions in Extension and Outreach service by graduate students in UMD Entomology
Brendan and Kristin attended the Entomological Society of America Annual Meeting in Vancouver and presented their research:
“A good neighborhood to raise a brood: Tree species diversity decreases oviposition and tree damage”
“Impacts of nitrogen-fixing rhizobia on resilience to herbivore pest damage and drought stress in soybean”
Summer
Max finished the 2,400th collection from his litter study emergence traps. This concludes the fieldwork portion of his PhD! Praise has been busy sorting these samples- only 500 more to go!
We teamed up with Eric Griffin’s lab and John Parker’s lab to complete caterpillar, hemipteran, and endophyte sampling at BiodiversiTREE. Eva also ran a feeding trial in lab with 460 (hungry hungry) caterpillars to evaluate how well they grew eating different tree species.
Brendan tracked the soybean variety trial at 4 farms across Maryland and set up a greenhouse experiment with ~ 624 soybean plants. Our preliminary results from the field trial were featured in the Roots in Research newsletters for both the Clarksville and Poplar Hill farms.
Kristin began profiling the Entomology Department’s Insect Museum, a hidden treasure full of historic specimens.
Lauren and Karin attended the Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting in Montreal and presented their research:
“Diversity alters allometry: early results from a young forest diversity experiment”
“Butterfly, moth, and sawfly diversity and host-use patterns change based on tree planting diversity: the first eight years of forest growth”
“Modern attempts to remedy previous environmental injustice patterns structures urban street tree biodiversity”
May
Karin gave a talk on gardening with ecological principles for the Science on Tap lecture series
Eva, Elizabeth, and Max volunteered at the Insect Petting Zoo for Maryland Day
April
Welcome to the lab, Praise! Praise is a recent graduate of UMD and will be working as a technician.
Karin received the CMNS Board of Visitors Junior Faculty Award
Our lab attended the Entomological Society of America’s Eastern Branch meeting in Philadelphia. Read more about it on our blog!
February
We are now hiring! Come work in the lab this summer as a technician. The full ad is posted here.
Max gave a talk on spring ephemerals for the Anacostia Watershed Society.
January
Kristin presented a lecture entitled “Wasp Words: Morphological & Taxonomic Terminology” for the WaspID online course in Hymenoptera identification, curation, and collection.
Inaugural Burghardt Lab retreat! While making time to see each other in person is especially important during covid-times, we hope to make this a January intercession tradition. We took stock of our accomplishments and goals, then topped it all off with some hiking in the beautiful Shenandoah mountains.
2021
November
Members of the Burghardt Lab presented research at the Entomology Society of America’s annual meeting. Highlights included:
Lauren and Karin’s symposium “Human management in cities and suburbs: Challenges and opportunities for insect conservation”
10 minute papers
Max “Comparing the impacts of autumn leaf litter management and canopy diversity on overwintering insect communities in rural and urban landscapes”
Lauren “Linking Insect Communities to Ecosystem Function: Litter Decomposition in a Forest Diversity Experiment”
Brendan “Plant-chewers turned flesh-eaters: Altered macronutrient ratios promote cannibalism in a generalist herbivore pest (Trichoplusia ni)” ***won second place in student competition!***
September
Another field season of data collection wrapped up! Soybeans harvested, insects and spiders counted and/or collected, tree traits and growth in the books for one more year.
August
Molly was awarded the Cory Undergraduate Scholarship. Congratulations, Molly!
NEW ARTICLE PUBLISHED: A real-life physical copy of the journal containing Lauren and Karin’s Current Opinions in Insect Science piece on how human management of suburban and urban systems challenges insect herbivores turned up! Read this open access article here!
June
Welcome to the lab, Brendan Randall! Brendan will be working as a technician this summer and starting a Master’s program in the fall.
This month also saw the peak of Brood X cicada emergence in Maryland. While entomologists everywhere were closely tracking the natural phenomenon, Kristin and Eva played an especially active role in educational outreach with UMD’s Cicada Crew.
May
Congratulations to Elizabeth, who received high honors (!) on her undergraduate honors thesis entitled: THE EFFECT OF TREE SPECIES AND TREE DIVERSITY ON SPIDER ABUNDANCE IN A FOREST DIVERSITY EXPERIMENT.
April
Eva and Kristin are a part of this year’s Cicada Crew, an outreach effort to teach those in the area about the exciting prospects of Brood X cicadas. Read more in the Diamondback.
Max launched emergence traps for his research on suburban lawn litter manipulations. Read more about it here.
2020
September
Working from home allowed Kelsey to witness one of nature’s many bizarre plant-insect interactions. Read all about it on our blog!
August
Kelsey and Max presented posters at the Ecological Society of America virtual conference.
July
Welcome to the lab Lauren Schmitt, our new Postdoc. We can’t wait to do some socially-distanced science with you at BiodiversiTREE!
June
Congratulations to Zoe Read, who completed her undergraduate degree this spring!! Coronavirus precautions have put a damper on celebrations for her (and all other graduates), but we wish her the best of luck as she moves on to the University of Maine. She will be starting a Master’s degree this fall in Forest Resources. Zoe was a big help on our collaborative soybean project this summer and has been working hard to finish up results from her own independent project with soybeans. This blog post describes her experimental setup and what she’s found so far!
April
Kristin and Max were both awarded extramural funding this spring! Read more about their awards here.
February
Welcome to the lab Kristin Jayd, a recent alumnus of UMD and our new research technician. We are excited to have her help us identify the parasitoids we reared this summer from caterpillar sampling at BiodiversiTREE.
January
Read the newest addition to our blog here! Elizabeth wrote about a very hungry polyphemus caterpillar we found this summer at BiodiversiTREE.