Hanna Nicole DortDoktorand
Om mig
I am a Ph.D. student supervised by Christopher Wheat (see our lab website here) . I received my B.Sc. in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (USA) and my M.Sc. in Ecology and Conservation Biology at Uppsala University (Sweden). My master’s thesis centered around the consequences of hostplant defence induction for female choice and larval performance in Pieris rapae.
In addition to my research, I help teach the genetics portion of the Conservation Biology course at Stockholm University.
Forskning
I am interested in the adaptations that allow certain insects to overcome the chemical defences of cruciferous plants. My research at SU focuses on the evolution of nitrile-specifier proteins (NSPs) in pierid butterflies (e.g. cabbage whites, green-veined whites). I am currently using the CRISPR-Cas9 system to knock out several members of the NSP gene family in Pieris napi, and I plan on assessing how different knockouts affect larval performance on a wide variety of hostplants.