{"id":58915,"date":"2014-04-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-grad-student-wins-award-for-top-research-paper-from-royal-entomological-society\/"},"modified":"2014-04-18T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-18T00:00:00","slug":"uri-grad-student-wins-award-for-top-research-paper-from-royal-entomological-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2014\/04\/uri-grad-student-wins-award-for-top-research-paper-from-royal-entomological-society\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 grad student wins award for top research paper from Royal Entomological Society"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tScranton native\u2019s paper on Chinese mantid was first she ever wrote<\/p>\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 18, 2014 \u2013 溏心vlog免费B站 doctoral student Jamie Rafter has set the bar quite high for herself. The first research paper she ever wrote has won an award from the Royal Entomological Society as the best research paper published in the last two years in its journal Ecological Entomology.<\/p>\n


\nThe award includes a check for \u00a3600 ($1,000) and a trip to the society\u2019s conference in York, England in August.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWhen I heard about the award, I just couldn\u2019t stop saying \u2018Oh, my god.\u2019 I was squealing with excitement,\u201d said Rafter, 28, who works under the guidance of Associate Professor Evan Preisser. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t call what I do earth-shattering \u2013 it\u2019s not going to change the world \u2013 so I never expected this.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nHer paper was selected as the Editor\u2019s Choice when it was published in January 2013, and it was the journal\u2019s third most-downloaded paper of the year.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI don\u2019t know the process of how they pick the best, and I didn\u2019t apply for it, so I was very shocked to find out that I won,\u201d said Rafter, a native of Scranton, Penn., who now lives in Wakefield.<\/p>\n


\nThe paper examined an unusual predatory behavior exhibited by the Chinese mantid, a large insect that the 溏心vlog免费B站 student describes as \u201cbeautiful and charismatic.\u201d Introduced to the U.S. from China in the 1890s, the mantid has established a population at 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s East Farm, where she first learned about the behavior.<\/p>\n


\nAccording to Rafter, Chinese mantids eat monarch caterpillars by first gutting their prey, a behavior exhibited by few other insects. The monarchs contain toxins they acquire from eating milkweed plants as a defense against being eaten by predators.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe Chinese mantid starts feeding while the caterpillars are still alive, and as they do, they break into the body and the gut material starts popping out,\u201d she explained. \u201cThey don\u2019t eat the guts, and they make no effort to go back and eat it later, as if they don\u2019t want anything to do with it. But when they ate other caterpillars we tested, they ate them in their entirety, including the guts.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nRafter had speculated that the behavior may have been an effort to avoid the caterpillar\u2019s toxicity, but a lab study she conducted found that the gut and body tissues of the caterpillar have similar concentrations of toxins. Her findings suggest that the mantids may be less sensitive to the toxins found in the body tissues than in the gut, so they may gut the monarchs to reduce their toxic exposure. She said that the mantid may also be selectively eating the body tissue because it contains higher nutritional value than the gut tissue. <\/p>\n


\nRafter is continuing her research on the Chinese mantis and expects to graduate from 溏心vlog免费B站 with a doctorate in May 2015. She then hopes to become a college professor.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI really enjoy teaching, but I love research,\u201d she said. \u201cI see myself at a small liberal arts school, working with undergraduates to get them interested in this type of research and then sending them off to grad school.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nMarketing & Communications photo by Michael Salerno Photography.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scranton native\u2019s paper on Chinese mantid was first she ever wrote KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 18, 2014 \u2013 溏心vlog免费B站 doctoral student Jamie Rafter has set the bar quite high for herself. The first research paper she ever wrote has won an award from the Royal Entomological Society as the best research paper […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58917,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}