April 15, 2024 - The Levine lab presented four posters at Kean University's Research Days!
December 14, 2023 - Levine Lab undergraduate Nicolas Largotta presented his summer research project, "Optimizing a protocol for generating genomic data for the invasive spotted lanternfly in New Jersey" at Kean's IST Research Day.
October 11, 2023 - Kean News produced a video about our work on spotted lanternfly evolution.
September 16, 2023 - The Levine Lab gave a workshop for Kean Scholar's Academy, Kean's college preparatory program for underserved school districts in New Jersey. We taught KSA students how to identify and find spotted lanternflies and their egg masses, and we sent students home with spotted lanternfly collection kits so that they can contribute samples to our NSF funded study on spotted lanternfly evolution.
August 31, 2023 - Dr. Brenna Levine's research was featured in the Kean University Opening Day address given by President Repollet. See the clip at 51:19 below.
July 25, 2023 - Dr. Brenna Levine and Nicolas Largotta attended the 2023 Northeast Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation meeting at Wesleyan University where Dr. Levine presented their talk, "ParthenoGenius: A heuristic for inferring parthenogenesis in reptiles using genetic and genomic data".
June 28, 2023 - Kean University published a news article about Dr. Levine's contribution to the discovery of facultative parthenogenesis in crocodilians. Nicolas Largotta is interviewed in this article. Link to article: www.kean.edu/news/kean-university-professor-brenna-levine-helps-discover-first-virgin-birth-crocodiles
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June 07, 2023 - Dr. Brenna Levine co-authored a study that found the first documented case of facultative parthenogenesis in crocodilians. This finding makes it very likely that dinosaurs and pterosaurs were capable of facultative parthenogenesis as well. This paper was covered by nearly every major news organization in the world, including BBC World News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Dr. Levine was interviewed about this research on BBC World News TV (www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEnYAvSTHaI) and "About That with Andrew Chang" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvr3Ujbnt4).
May 17, 2023 - Dr. Brenna Levine was awarded a highly competitive NSF grant for her proposal "BRC-BIO: Effects of urbanization on the evolutionary dynamics of urbanization on invasive species range expansion". This $471,223 award will fund a 3-year project at Kean University on spotted lanternflies in rural and urban environments. Link to award announcement:
www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2312129&HistoricalAwards=false
www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2312129&HistoricalAwards=false