We are challenging silver spotted skipper caterpillars by inserting a filament that mimics a parasitoid for individuals that do and do not experience a heatwave. Then, we follow each caterpillar to determine how strong their immune response is (based on the amount of melanin deposited on the filament) and also if this impacts their survivorship or development rate.

This is a new area of research for the Ries lab being led by graduate student Grace Jeschke.

Check out this video of the experimental process: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hkO34fWimYfWC0Z4vNctJweZYLaZiELn/view?u...