- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
DAVIS--UC Davis undergraduate entomology researcher Jadrian Ejercito of the Shirley Luckhart lab won second place in the highly competitive student poster competition at the 99th annual meeting of the Pacific Branch of the Entomological Society of America (PBESA), held recently in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
His poster, on a malaria mosquito, was titled “Effects of Abscisic Acid on the Lifespan and Fecundity of Anopheles stephensi.” Ejercito was the only UC Davis entomology student to win a poster award.
For the project, he collaborated with his mentor, Shirley Luckhart, a professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunity and co-director of the Center for Vectorborne Diseases; and doctoral candidate Elizabeth Glennon of the Luckhart lab.
Judges scored the poster on 12 criteria, including abstract, presentation, introduction, objectives, results and discussion, and significance of the results.
Ejercito, a senior scheduled to receive his bachelor's degree in entomology in June, works in the Luckhart main lab as well as the Contained Research Facility.
A graduate of Nathaniel A. Narbonne High School in Harbor City, Los Angeles County, Ejercito joined the Luckhart lab as a MURALS scholar, a program dedicated to supporting undergraduate researchers. MURALS is an acronym for “Mentorship for Undergraduate Research in Agriculture, Letters an Science.” Formed in the spring of 1988, under the sponsorship of the Office of Student Affairs and the academic leadership of the College of Letters and Science, MURALS now includes students from all academic disciplines. Its mission is to encourage students to further their education beyond the baccalaureate.