The lab bid farewell to Bethan Littleford-Colquhoun -- who has been the beating heart of our program for several years -- as she embarked on the next exciting chapter in her career. 

Beth has been awarded a prestigious Prize Fellow to launch her independent research group at the University of Bath in the UK, where she will join a cohort of talented PIs forming a new research cluster focused on the microbiome. Because Beth will be there, it is sure to become an exciting epicenter for excellence in the field. Students and junior researchers who are interested -- take note!

We will all miss Beth, but we take heart in knowing that we can continue to collaborate and learn from her for years to come. What an all-star she is...!!

The upshot: The gerbils that are the best jumpers are not necessarily the best maneuverers, and vice versa. Led by Courtney Reed, the Kartzinel Lab ran a series of controlled laboratory tests to discover that each individual's decision in the pivotal moment it meets a predator may be enabled by -- or constrained by -- the anatomy of its hind limbs. The paper Distinct morphological drivers of jumping and maneuvering performance in gerbils was published in Journal of Experimental Biology!