James R. Walters' Lab
Assistant Professor of Evolutionary Genomics
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
University of Kansas, Lawrence
(Jamie)
Current Lab Members
Jasmin Pimsupa
Undergraduate Student
Researching pollenation ecology in lepidopteran species using local and historical samples.
Walters Lab Gathering, Spring 2017:
From L to R: Aloy Gu, Dylan Sims-West, Jamie (kneeling), Andrew Mongue, Jordyn Koehn, Megan Hansen, Ayelle Walters (winged), Petr Nguyen, Anna Volenikova, Nathan Stucky.
Katie McLaughlin
Graduate Student
Rachel Manweiler
Undergraduate Student
Researching sperm biology in Plodia moths and developing DNA extraction methods for the Oe monarch parasite.
Former undergraduate members
Thomas Johnson
Thomas is a gifted keeper of insects and devoted natural historian who also mastered many wet-lab techniques. In Fall 2020 Thomas started PhD in insect ecology & evolution at Syracuse University.
Dylan Sims-West
Dylan worked to analyze the biochemical nature of a pupal color mutation in monarch butterflies, and also generally supported a range of insect-rearing projects in the lab. After graduation Dylan become a lab technician in the MacDonald lab, and plans to attend graduate school in evolutionary genetics.
Jordyn Koehn
Jordyn was an essential organizer of people and projects in the lab, helping to rear large numbers of monarch butterflies in a controlled cross. She also pursued bioinformatic anayses of sperm proteomic data, receiving two KINBRE fellowships for this work. After KU, Jordyn entered a graduate progrom in Genetic Counseling.
Megan Hansen
Receiving a KINBRE STAR trainee fellowship, Megan pursued bioinformatic anlyses investigating the relationship between sperm protein and testes transcript abundance. Additionally, she did field work, helping to collect Manduca in North Carolina. After KU, Megan attended medical school.
Rachel Elting
REU 2018 REU student & KINBRE Fellow
Rachel performed bioinformatic analyses to identify W-linked PacBio sequencing reads Heliconius butterflies.
Ana Driscoll
REU 2018 REU student
Ana investigated the potential to use differential expression statistical pipelines to assess sex-linkage of transcripts using genomic resequencing data.
Derrick Harms
REU 2015 Summer student
An undergraduate from Kansas University, Derrick worked during summer 2015 assembling transcriptome data from Heliconius melpomene
Jeff Cole
REU 2015 Summer student
An undergraduate from Samford College, Jeff worked during summer 2015 to analyze the molecular evolution of Monarch butterfly sperm proteins.
Danny Thiesen
Spring 2015 undergraduate researcher
From Kansas University, Danny collected data on antioxidation capacity of several tissues in Monarch butterflies.
Margaret Stratton
REU 2014 Summer student
An undergraduate from Tufts University, Margaret worked during summer 2014 identifying W-linked sequences in Manduca sexta
Channing Shives
Undergraduate student
Channing is working on bioinformatic analysis of spermatophore proteins. She also assists with maintaining butterfly cultures and collection of reproductive tissues.
Former graduate students and
senior researchers
Petr Nguyen
Petr is a Fulbright visiting scholar from the Czech Republic researching Lepidopteran sex chromosome evolution in Yponomeuta moths
Anna Volenikova
Anna is a Fulbright visiting scholar from the Czech Republic researching Lepidopteran sex chromosome evolution in Hepialid moths