Lab News


Jan 5, 2024
The key to genera for Pyrgomorphidae is finally published! Kudos to Ricardo.

Dec 24, 2023
Hojun, Brandon and Jackson (and Ricardo) visited Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea for collecting expedition in December 2023. Lots of orthops!

Oct 17, 2023
The Song Lab and the BPRI attended the International Congress of Orthopterology in Merida, Mexico. Exciting research and good times.

Jul 15, 2023
The inaugural CRICKET COURSE was held at the Archbold Biological Station as part of the NSF grant's broader impacts activity.

Jul 5, 2023
We have two visiting scholars visiting the Song Lab: Dr. Riffar Sultana from Pakistan and Onur Uluar from Turkey.

Mar 31, 2023
Vivian Peralta Santana received the GRFP! Congrats Vivi!

Feb 19, 2023
My former student Dr. Bert Foquet's paper on behavioral plasticity of the Central American locust published in the Journal of Experimental Biology has been shortlisted for the journal's outstanding paper prize!

Dec 10, 2022
Bert's PhD work on the time-course phase change of the Central American locust is published in the Journal of Experimental Biology!

Aug 17, 2022

Hoang, T., Foquet, B., Rana, S., Little, D.W., Woller, D.A., Sword, G.A., and Song, H. 2022. Development of RNAi methods for the Mormon cricket, Anabrus simplex (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae). Insects 13, 739. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects13080739


Jun 11, 2022
Hojun, Maeva, Alyssa attended the Arthropod Genomics Symposium at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Hojun presented a talk describing the BPRI genome sequencing.

Jun 1, 2022
During the summer 2022, the Song Lab welcomes two REU students. Aubrey Rogers (TAMU) will study the correlation between katydid songs and stridulatory structures. Eliyashaib James (Rutgers) will study locust phase polyphenism.

Apr 5, 2022
Our own Brandon Woo was awarded the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! He will be studying the phylogeny, evolution, and communication of Tridactylidae. Congratulations!

Mar 4, 2022
Youtube Show "Bizarre Beasts" featured locusts using many of the footages taken from the Song Lab and the BPRI members. See The Strange Thing That Turns Grasshoppers Into Locusts .

Jan 14, 2022
Hojun received the Vice Chancellor’s Awards in Excellence in Teaching. Here is the link for more information: here

Oct 10, 2021
After serving as the Editor-in-Chief for the journal Insect Systematics and Evolution for 7 years, Hojun will step down from that role, and start a new position as a Co-Editor-in-Chief for the ESA journal Insect Systematics and Diversity with Dr. Jason Bond. For more info, please see this announcement.

Sep 30, 2021
Brandon's new paper on tridactylid is published in JOR!

Jul 6, 2021
Song Lab welcomes four new graduate students: Alyssa Canova (PhD ENTO), Brandon Woo (PhD ENTO), Vivian Peralta Santana (PhD EEB), and Carla de Loera (MS ENTO).

Jun 8, 2021
Bert's paper titled, "Comparative analysis of phenotypic plasticity sheds light on the evolution and molecular underpinnings of locust phase polyphenism" has been published in Scientific Reports!

Jun 4, 2021
Song Lab (Hojun, Seema, Jorge, and Alyssa) traveled to Boise, Idaho to conduct experiments on Mormon crickets.

May 21, 2021
A review paper on the Central American locust titled, "State of the Art Management of the Central American Locust Schistocerca piceifrons piceifrons (Walker, 1870)" has been published as part of a special issue in the journal Agronomy.

May 3, 2021
Dr. Seema Rana joined our lab as a new postdoc for the USDA Farmbill project on Mormon cricket RNAi.

Dec 9, 2020
Bert graduated with a PhD!!! He will join Scott Sakaluk's lab at Illinois State University as a postdoc. I will miss you!

Oct 13, 2020
Congratulations to Toan Hoang for successfully defending his MS thesis! Congratulations to Bert Foquet for successfully defending his PhD dissertation! You guys make me proud!

Oct 3, 2020
Nature Ecology and Evolution blog on our new paper is published at Transcriptomes, fossils and singing insects.

Oct 2, 2020
Our latest research on the phylogeny of Orthoptera and the evolution of acoustic communication has just been published in Nature Communications.

Oct 1, 2020
Official press release about BPRI from TAMU AgriLife: "New institute to study behavioral plasticity in locusts".

Sep 6, 2020
I am super excited to announce that we were awarded the NSF's Biology Integration Institute grant to understand locust phase polyphenism by integrating across all scales of biological organization, from molecules to landscape. Our "Behavioral Plasticity Research Institute (BPRI)" is one of four inaugural Biology Integration Institutes. The BPRI will involve a group of researchers from 5 institutions (Baylor College of Medicine [lead], Texas A&M University, Arizona State University, UC Davis, and Washington University in St. Louis). This is fantastic news for locust researchers and phenotypic plasticity researchers.

Aug 28, 2020
A nice collaborative paper on Mexican grasshoppers with Ricardo, Salo, Bert, Martina, and Hojun, published in Zootaxa.


Aug 16, 2020
Song Lab welcomes Miriel Otero as a new PhD student starting in Fall 2020!




Jun 16, 2020
Hojun was interviewed for a Forbes.com article "What’s Up With Those Locust Swarms?".

May 20, 2020
Hojun was interviewed for a Mashable.com article "How this big locust plague will end".

Mar 14, 2020
An entirely student-led paper on the use of blue light for night collecting is published in American Entomologist!

Jan 19, 2020
Hojun will be visiting the Australian National Insect Collection in Canberra, Australia as a Fulbright Scholar for six months (January to July, 2020). He will be studying the taxonomy of the Australian catantopine grasshoppers.

Jan 5, 2020
A nice collaboration with folks at Baylor College of Medicine. With Bert as a co-author. Wang, H., Foquet, B., Dewell, R.B., Song, H., Dierick, H., and Gabbiani, F. 2020. Molecular characterization and distribution of the voltage-gated sodium channel, Para, in the brain of the grasshopper and vinegar fly. Journal of Comparative Physiology A. doi: 10.1007/s00359-019-01396-4

Dec 12, 2019
Song Lab (except Hojun) attended the ESA meeting in St. Louis, MO and presented their talks. The Orthoptera Symposium was also organized and moderated by Bert and Derek. Drew Little received the runner-up award at the undergraduate oral presentation, and Ricardo received the Snodgrass Award from SysEB. Meanwhile, Hojun traveled to Australia to collect grasshoppers in NSW, and attended the Australian Entomological Society meeting in Brisbane.

Oct 17, 2019
NSF notified Song Lab that our international collaborative NSF project titled, "NSFDEB-NERC: Multidisciplinary approach to bioacoustics: Integrating phylogenomics, biophysics, and functional genomics to unravel the evolution of hearing and singing in katydids, crickets, and allies" is recommended for funding for full amount. This project is an international collaboration with Fernando Montealegre-Z (University of Lincoln), Nathan Bailey (University of St. Andrews), Mike Whiting (Brigham Young University), and Seunggwan Shin (University of Memphis). We are so excited!!!

Oct 17, 2019
Song Lab welcomes Ms. Sundus Zahid, PhD student from Hazara University in Pakistan, who will work on the systematics of Pyrgomorphidae for 6 months.

Sep 16, 2019
After a long review process (took one year!!!), it's finally published! Kilpatrick, S.K., Foquet, B., Castellanos, A.A., Gotham, S., Little, D.W., and Song, H. 2019. Revealing hidden density-dependent phenotypic plasticity in sedentary grasshoppers in the genus Schistocerca Stål (Orthoptera: Acrididae: Cyrtacanthacridinae). Journal of Insect Physiology 118: 103937.

Sep 16, 2019
Our new description on the Costa Rican king cricket has been published in Zootaxa! Richardson, S., Trimm, T., Paredes, R., Koehl, J., and Song, H. 2019. A new species of king cricket Glaphyrosoma Brunner von Wattenwyl, 1888 (Orthoptera: Anostostomatidae: Glaphyrosomatini) from Costa Rica with behavioral observations. Zootaxa 4671 (1): 093–104.

Sep 4, 2019
Entomology Today featured our paper on density-dependent phenotypic plasticity in the South American locust, Schistocerca cancellata!

Aug 23, 2019
A collaboration with the Soybean Aphid genome sequencing consortium, a new paper on the mitochondrial genome of the soybean aphid was published today. Song, H., Donthu, R.K., Hall, R., Hon, L., Weber, E., Badger, J.H. and Giordano, R. 2019. Description of soybean aphid (Aphis glycines Matsumura) mitochondrial genome and comparative mitogenomics of Aphididae (Hemiptera: Sternorrhyncha). Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 113: 103208.

Aug 12, 2019
Song Lab would like to welcome Jorge Humberto Medina Duran as a new PhD student through EEB program. He will work on the coevolution between Orthoptera and their gregarine parasites.

Jul 24, 2019
Pocco, M.E., Cigliano, M.M., Foquet, B., Lange, C.E., Nieves, E.L., and Song, H. 2019. Density-dependent phenotypic plasticity in the South American locust, Schistocerca cancellata (Serville, 1838) (Orthoptera, Acrididae, Cyrtacanthacridinae). Annals of the Entomological Society of America. doi: 10.1093/aesa/saz032

Jul 19, 2019
Song Lab visited USDA APHIS PPQ Field Operation Station in Boise, Idaho to conduct RNAi research on Mormon crickets.

Jun 21, 2019
Congrats to Ricardo for publishing his dissertation chapter on the origin of New World Pyrgomorphidae!

Jun 3, 2019
Our new paper titled, "Predictability in the evolution of Orthopteran cardenolide insensitivity" is published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. This work is a dissertation chapter of Lu Yang of Princeton University, and Ricardo and I contributed to this work.

May 27, 2019
Brandon Woo from Cornell has joined the Song Lab over the summer as an REU student. He will be working on the taxonomy of Eremidium. He's already an accomplished orthopterist, so welcome Brandon!

May 8, 2019
Song Lab is doing a lot of work over the summer 2019! We have a recently funded USDA Farmbill project to RNAi on Mormon Crickets, so we are busy rearing these lovely insects. Turns out they are very different from grasshoppers! A lot of RNAi work will be conducted on our Schistocerca species. So exciting! We will be collecting all over Texas, so that's going to be a lot of fun!

Apr 28, 2019
Dr. Ricardo Marino-Perez left the Song Lab after 8 years. He will start as a postdoc with Lacey Knowles at University of Michigan Museum of Zoology from May 2019. Good luck!

Apr 20, 2019
Jorge Humberto Medina Duran, who will join the Song Lab starting in August 2019, visited the lab for 1 week.

Mar 31, 2019
Song Lab (Hojun, Bert, Ricardo, former student Derek) attended and presented at the 13th International Congress of Orthopterology in Agadir, Morocco.

Jan 5, 2019
Hojun and Bert attended and presented research at the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting in Tampa, FL.

Dec 14, 2018
Congratulations to Dr. Ricardo Mariño-Pérez who has finally completed his degree. Another world authority on Orthoptera produced!

Dec 10, 2018
Cody's undergraduate research on Schistocerca ceratiola has finally been published in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America! Congrats Cody!

Nov 26, 2018
Hojun, Ricardo, and Bert will be going to South Africa and Namibia as part of the ongoing NSF grant on Eremidium. Helicopter rides and a lot of collecting!

Aug 25, 2018
Phylogeny of Tettigoniidae paper is published in Insect Systematics and Diversity!

Aug 18, 2018
Hojun Song and Spencer Behmer led a successful study abroad program at the TAMU Soltis Center in Costa Rica on August 4-18, 2018.

Jul 31, 2018
Song lab welcomes Toan Hoang, who joined as a new PhD student through the EEB program!

Jul 24, 2018
Our grasshopper phylogeny paper is published at Insect Systematics and Diversity. Song, H., Mariño-Pérez, R.,Woller, D.A., and Cigliano, M.M. 2018. Evolution, diversification, and biogeography of grasshoppers (Orthoptera: Acrididae). Insect Systematics and Diversity 2(4): 3; 1-25.

Jul 20, 2018
Hojun visited BYU's Monte Bean Museum to recurate grasshopper collections, and go through the genomic collection on July 16-20, 2018.

Jun 30, 2018
Hojun, Ricardo, and Carla visited the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University to study South African Eremidium and Mexican grasshoppers on June 26-30, 2018.

Jun 19, 2018
Congratulations to Bert Foquet for successively passing his candidacy exam!

May 30, 2018
Ricardo successfully defended his dissertation on May 29, 2018. It was a massive piece of work, covering the taxonomy, phylogeny, and biogeography of Pyrgomorphidae. Well done and congratulations Dr. Mariño-Pérez!

May 21, 2018
We welcome two new REU students, Carla De Loera and Sam Franklin, who will conduct 10-week summer research at the Song Lab!

Apr 14, 2018
Hojun and Bert traveled to Tempe to attend the launch event of the Global Locust Initiative at Arizona State University. It was great meeting with old friends, and the Song Lab alum Derek Woller was representing the grasshopper research for all of North America, which was pretty cool!

Feb 1, 2018
My editorial on locust research appeared in Open Access Government.

Nov 25, 2017
Hojun and Ricardo are traveling to KZN, South Africa to collect lentulids and other orthopterans throughout the Afromontane forests from November 27-December 14, 2017.

Nov 8, 2017
Song Lab members attended and presented at ESA. Highlights include the Orthoptera Symposium organized by Derek and Tyler, student talks (Ryan, Shelby, Ricardo), Ricardo's winning the 2nd place in the student presentation, trying out Rocky Mountain Oysters, rattlesnakes, elks, etc.

Oct 17, 2017
Derek came back from Arizona to defend his dissertation. He presented a very impressive talk and passed with flying colors. Congrats Dr. Woller!

Oct 13, 2017
Ricardo, Bert, Martina, and Salo are traveling to southern Mexico (Guerrero and Oaxaca) to collect Orthoptera for two weeks.

Sep 26, 2017
Hojun and Ricardo attended the Dresden Meeting of Insect Phylogeny in Dresden, Germany.

Sep 3, 2017
Dr. Martina Pocco from CEPAVE, Argentina is visiting our lab as a Fulbright Scholar for 3 months to work on South American locusts and Romaleidae.

Aug 26, 2017
A collaborative review paper on locust phase polyphenism has been published in Advances in Insect Physiology. Bert and Hojun are co-authors. Click here for the paper.

Aug 21, 2017
Dr. Song led a new study abroad course in Costa Rica at Texas A&M Soltis Center in August 6-20, 2017. 12 students learned about tropical entomology and it was a success. Please check out the program's Facebook page.

Aug 18, 2017
Hojun was interviewed by Entomology Today for a very interesting question regarding locust swarms for the upcoming solar eclipse. Click here to read the article.

Jul 26, 2017
One of the major outputs from the CAREER grant is published in Scientific Reports. Click here for accessing the paper.

Jul 14, 2017
Ricardo's first dissertation chapter has been published in Systematic Entomology. Click here for the paper.



Jun 8, 2017
Salo's revision of Sphenarium has been published in Zootaxa.

May 31, 2017
PhD Student Daniela Santos Silva from UFV in Brazil visited the Song Lab to study tetrigids.



Feb 27, 2017
Derek's awesome paper on Melanoplus rotundipennis male genitalia using microCT has been published in the Journal of Morphology! Click here for PDF

Feb 22, 2017
Hojun gave a departmental seminar in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Houston.

Jan 15, 2017
Hojun and Ryan visited the Soltis Center in Costa Rica to establish a new study abroad program.

Dec 31, 2016
NSF DEB-1655097: “SG: Collaborative Research: Evolution and Speciation in Afromontane and Alpine Grasshoppers in Southern Africa” (PI: D. Otte, Co-PI: H. Song) ($149,501 [TAMU portion: $59,070]) awarded!!! Hojun will join Dan Otte to the trip to South Africa next year! Exciting!

Dec 29, 2016
Derek Woller has accepted a new permanent position at the USDA APHIS PPQ CPHST Phoenix Lab, Arizona. He will start in January 2017. Congratulations!

Dec 10, 2016
Hojun and Bert visited Yucatan to attend the OIRSA Group Workshop to discuss about how to control the Central American locust, Schistocerca piceifrons.

Nov 10, 2016
Hojun and Ricardo attended the International Congress of Orthopterology in Ilheus, Brazil. Hojun gave a plenary talk on the systematics of Orthoptera. Ricardo won the Ted Cohn Award for Excellence as a Young Professional Orthopterist.

Sep 30, 2016
Song Lab attended the International Congress of Entomology in Orlando, FL. Derek organized a symposium on Orthoptera. Derek won the Comstock Award. Shelby and Ryan won Undergraduate Presentation Awards. Hojun presented at the locust symposium.

Sep 21, 2016
Tyler's first manuscript titled, "The ecotype paradigm: Testing the concept in an ecologically divergent grasshopper" is published in Insect Systematics and Evolution! Great job Tyler! Click here to access the paper!

Sep 6, 2016
Our new katydid phylogeny paper, which is Joey Mugleston's dissertation work, was published in Invertebrate Systematics! Click here to access the paper!

Aug 26, 2016
Song Lab students rock! At the Nineteenth Annual Graduate Student Forum in the Department of Entomology, Derek Woller won the third place for his amazing talk on 3D reconstruction of grasshopper genitalia. Tyler Raszick, a Ph.D. student in Greg Sword's lab, who was a M.S. student at the Song Lab back at UCF, won the first place. More at this link

Jul 11, 2016
A new paper (with a huge author list) on the importance of type specimen is published in Zootaxa! Click here to access the paper!

Jun 29, 2016
Congratulations to Derek Woller for winning OGAPS Dissertation Fellowship!

Jun 17, 2016
Summer 2016 is a pretty busy one for the Song Lab! 1. Visitors: Salomon Sanabria-Urban is visiting from UNAM for 6 weeks to complete his revision of Sphenarium. Seth Yang and Lauren Yang are RAHSS and REU students visiting from Florida and will work until the end of July. 2. Travel: Lots of local and international trips planned. Ricardo is traveling to Europe to take type images of Pyrgomorphidae. Dr. Song is traveling to Argentina to work with the South American locust. Ricardo and Bert will travel to Mozambique to collect Orthoptera in July. The entire Song Lab will travel to Costa Rica in August to collect Orthoptera. 3. Research: Behavioral assays, taxonomic revisions, 3D imaging, phylogenetics, transcriptomics, genomics, and more...

May 5, 2016
Dr. Song will be promoted with tenure to Associate Professor effective September 1, 2016!

Apr 29, 2016
Congratulations to Derek for winning the TA of the Year Award from the Entomology Department.

Apr 11, 2016
Dr. Song received REU and RAHSS supplements for his ongoing CAREER grant. Our lab will be very busy for sure!

Feb 14, 2016
Congratulations to Derek Woller, who has won this year's Comstock Award from the Entomological Society of America. It is the highest honor that an entomology grad student can receive. Way to go Derek! Click here for more

Feb 14, 2016
As part of the TAMU's Yucatan Initiative, Hojun visited Merida, Mexico for three days.

Jan 16, 2016
2016 is here and I am very excited to start this year after setting up my lab for the whole year in 2015. We are welcoming new members to the Song Lab! Bert Foquet is a new Ph.D. student from Belgium and he will start working on the evolution of the Central American locust. Ryan Selking is an undergraduate student who's going to do an independent research project, and Shelby Kilpatrick will be doing an honors project with me. Of course we still have Derek and Ricardo pushing their dissertation project, and Michael Riley is doing research, and Julian Sekoni is taking care of the colony. Looks like we will have a great year!

Jan 2, 2016
Just found out that Salo's first paper was published in PLoS one. Great work Salo! Sanabria-Urban, O.S., Song, H., Oyama, K., González-Rodríguez, A. Serrano-Meneses, M.A. and Cueva del Castillo, R. 2015. Body size adaptations to altitudinal climatic variation in Neotropical grasshoppers of the genus Sphenarium (Orthoptera: Pyrgomorphidae). PLoS One 10(12): e0145248.

Nov 12, 2015
Song lab, represented by Hojun, Derek, and Ricardo, (and past member Tyler) will be presenting at the Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America in Minneapolis.

Oct 18, 2015
Hojun, Ricardo, and Bert (incoming student) went on a two-week expedition in Yucatan peninsula, Mexico. This field trip centered on collecting the Central American locusts, as well as various orthopteran taxa across the Yucatan peninsula. We also brought back live Central American locust to start a colony for some really cool experiments.

Sep 27, 2015
Hojun presented an invited talk at the 7th Dresden Meeting on Insect Phylogeny.

Aug 27, 2015
Hojun is giving a seminar for TAMU EEB seminar series on September 14 on his research on locusts.

Aug 23, 2015
Hojun is giving his promotion & tenure presentation on August 24!

Jul 7, 2015
Hojun was awarded TAMU-CONACYT grant to work on population genomics of Schistocerca piceifrons piceifrons from Mexico. Can't wait to go to Yucatan in October!

Jun 1, 2015
Ricardo receives 4-year fellowship from CONACYT to support his graduate education. Well done Ricardo!

May 18, 2015
Michael Riley joined the Song Lab as the first undergraduate researcher at TAMU!

Mar 12, 2015
Our Phylogeny of Orthoptera paper is finally published in Cladistics and available as Early View!
300 million years of diversification: elucidating the patterns of orthopteran evolution based on comprehensive taxon and gene sampling
Hojun Song, Christiane Amédégnato, Maria Marta Cigliano, Laure Desutter-Grandcolas, Sam W. Heads, Yuan Huang, Daniel Otte and Michael F. Whiting
Click here for abstract

Feb 2, 2015
We have successfully relocated to Texas A&M University. Still lots to unpack, buy, etc, but we are now physically in College Station. I have moved with Derek and Ricardo, and we are happy to join the excellent entomology department at TAMU. We have also moved the orthopteroid collection of the TAMU insect collection to the lab and have many plans to expand the collection. I have also updated our lab website. So stay tuned as we become the main center for orthopteran systematics!

Dec 11, 2014
After 4.5 years of productive period at UCF, the Song Lab is moving to the Department of Entomology at Texas A&M University. Stay tuned for the updated website and more exciting news!

Nov 21, 2014
Song Lab traveled to Portland, Oregon to attend the Entomological Society of America. Everyone did a great job giving a presentation. Kudos to Derek, Ricardo, and Tyler for putting together an awesome symposium on Orthoptera. Check out the photos!

Nov 5, 2014
Steve Gotham has successfully defended his M.S. thesis, titled, "A TIME-COURSE ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIORAL PLASTICITY AND DIFFERENTIAL GENE EXPRESSION PATTERNS IN RESPONSE TO DENSITY IN SCHISTOCERCA AMERICANA (ORTHOPTERA: ACRIDIDAE)." Nicely done Steve!!!

Nov 3, 2014
Rachel Slatyer from the University of Melbourne (Australia) is visiting the Song Lab for a week to learn about grasshopper rearing. Welcome Rachel!

Oct 21, 2014
Orthoptera numt paper is finally published! click here to see the paper!

Oct 21, 2014
Hojun and Ricardo visited Yucatan, Mexico to attend a workshop on locust control and to collect Orthoptera. It was a great trip, with many local delicacies.

Oct 7, 2014
Lab photos have been updated. Please check them out!

Sep 15, 2014
Hojun presented an invited talk titled, "The Orthoptera Tree of Life: Elucidating patterns and processes of orthopteran evolution" at the 107th Annual Meeting of the German Zoological Society in Goettingen, Germany.

Sep 8, 2014
Grace is in the news for finding a new species of protist during her internship at AMNH. Way to go grace! Here's the website: http://today.ucf.edu/student-discovers-new-organism-new-york-internship/

Aug 14, 2014
Ricardo and Salomon visited ANSP and the Museum of Zoology at University of Michigan to borrow specimens and image types.

Aug 6, 2014
Ricardo and Steve just completed a two-week expedition to Baja California for collecting endemic pyrgomorphs. Unfortunately, the weather was too dry, but they got something they wanted. Great job!

Jun 25, 2014
Oscar Salmon Sanabria-Urban from UNAM is here, visiting the Song Lab for six months. He's going to work on finishing the revision of Sphenarium as well as the phylogeography of Sphenarium. Welcome Salo!

Jun 18, 2014
Hojun and Ricardo successfully completed a collecting expedition to Dominican Republic. We were able to collect Jaragua, Epidactidae and some Schistocerca and a whole lot of other orthops. DR was really interesting!

May 9, 2014
Congrats to Ricardo who successfully passed his candidacy exam!


May 3, 2014
Congratulations to Tyler Raszick on successfully defending his M.S. and graduating. He's off to Texas A&M for his PhD with Greg Sword in the fall.

May 1, 2014
Finally published! Open Access in Zootaxa. Woller, D.A., Fontana, P., Mariño-Pérez, R. and Song, H. 2014. Studies in Mexican Grasshoppers: Liladownsia fraile, a new genus and species of Dactylotini (Acrididae: Melanoplinae) and an updated molecular phylogeny of Melanoplinae. Zootaxa. 3793 (4): 475–495.

Apr 23, 2014
Dr. Song is giving an invited seminar at his alma mater, Ohio State University.

Apr 23, 2014
Ricardo Marino-Perez has finally won Ted Cohn Research Grant ($1000) from the Orthopterists' Society. Congrats Ricardo!

Apr 23, 2014
Congrats to Derek Woller who has won UCF Biology Travel Award ($900)!

Apr 18, 2014
Ji Min Noh has won UCF Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) to conduct her awesome research on beetle colors. Congrats!

Apr 18, 2014
Shiala Morales was accepted to the REU program in the University of Central Oklahoma to go to Turkey to study pollination biology! Congrats!

Apr 18, 2014
Dr. Song is an inaugural winner of new College of Sciences award: the Dean’s Rising Star Award!

Apr 3, 2014
Our undergrads, Grace Avecilla, Ji Min Noh, and Erin Barbeau, presented their research at the Annual Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence at UCF! Great job guys!

Apr 1, 2014
Derek presented his awesome research on Melanoplus at the annual Graduate Research Forum at UCF.

Mar 28, 2014
Tyler Raszick has successfully defended his Master's Thesis! Congrats! He's also accepted to the PhD program at Texas A&M. Congrats again!

Mar 26, 2014
Wow, Grace is accepted to another summer program. She will spend summer in NYC at the American Museum of Natural History working on the evolution of protists. Congrats!

Mar 21, 2014
Grace Avecilla has been accepted to participate in an REU program at UC San Francisco during this summer. Congrats Grace!

Mar 17, 2014
Congratulations to Cody Gale who won the Best Undergraduate Talk Award at the Southeastern Ecology and Evolution Conference (SEEC) at the Georgia Southern University. Great job Cody!!!

Mar 11, 2014
Ricardo took a month long trip to visit museums in Paris, London, and Berlin to take pictures of pyrgomorph types and borrow additional specimens. This trip was funded by the grant from OSF. Welcome back Ricardo!

Jan 8, 2014
Congratulations to Steve and Derek for winning the UCF Biology Student Travel Awards!

Dec 19, 2013
Congratulations to Derek who successfully passed his candidacy exam!

Dec 5, 2013
Derek did an awesome job interviewing entomologists at ESA 2013, and it's featured on this website . Great job!

Nov 28, 2013
Ricardo is conducting fieldwork in Mexico for about 3 weeks in December.

Nov 28, 2013
Congratulations to Steve Gotham who successfully defended his M.S. thesis proposal!

Nov 20, 2013
Congrats to Ricardo and Derek for publishing their first orthopteran descriptive paper in Zootaxa. Fontana, P., R. Mariño-Pérez and D. A. Woller. Studies in Mexican Tettigoniidae: A new genus of Copiphorini and the first description of male Conocephalus (Aphauropus) leptopterus Rehn and Hebard and the female of Insara acutitegmina Fontana, Buzzetti, Mariño-Pérez & García García. Zootaxa 3737(4): 429-453.

Nov 18, 2013
Congrats to Grace who just won the prestigious Burnett Research Scholars Grant ($1000) for her work on Hsp gene evolution! Way to go Grace!

Nov 7, 2013
Hojun has agreed to serve as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Insect Systematics & Evolution, starting in January 2014.

Nov 7, 2013
Song Lab, represented by Hojun, Derek, Ricardo, Tyler, Steve, and Cody, will be presenting at ESA 2013 in Austin, Texas!

Oct 23, 2013
Congrats to Ricardo for publishing his first UCF paper! Song, H. and Mariño-Pérez, R. Re-evaluation of taxonomic utility of male phallic complex in higher-level classification of Acridomorpha (Orthoptera: Caelifera). Insect Systematics & Evolution 44: 241-260.

Oct 16, 2013
Hojun's visiting Archbold Biological Station to give an invited seminar.

Oct 15, 2013
Service-learning component of Dr. Song's entomology course (ENY4004C/5006C) is featured in UCF Today.

Oct 15, 2013
Congrats to Ji who was selected as one of this year's Research and Mentoring Program (RAMP) Scholar!

Oct 8, 2013
Congrats to Steve Gotham who published his first paper in the Journal of Insect Physiology!!!

Oct 7, 2013
A phylogeny of Tettigoniidae paper finally published in MPE! Mugleston, J.D., Song, H. and Whiting, M.F. 2013. A century of paraphyly: A molecular phylogeny of katydids (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) supports multiple origins of leaf-like wings. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 69: 1120-1134.

Oct 3, 2013
Hojun is giving an invited seminar in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of South Florida.

Sep 16, 2013
Giselle Muschett, a PhD student at Macquarie University in Australia, is visiting the Song Lab for about 6 weeks. She will work on a revision of an Australian wingless grasshopper genus Kosciuscola. Welcome Giselle!

Aug 30, 2013
Dr. Song's research was featured in UCF COS News.

Aug 26, 2013
Thanks to Derek, we've finally uploaded some photos of Song Lab's eventful days.

Aug 6, 2013
Hojun, Ricardo and Derek are visiting Kunming, China to present their research at the International Congress of Orthopterology.

Jul 25, 2013
Robert Lanfear (Australian National University) visited the Song Lab and also gave a departmental seminar on molecular evolution.


Jul 8, 2013
The Song Lab is heading off to the U.S. Virgin Islands (St. John) for 9 days to explore and collect various insects.

Jul 7, 2013
The Bug Closet Website (bugcloset.cos.ucf.edu) has been completely updated! Please check it out!

Jun 26, 2013
First phylogeny of Kosciuscola! Tatarnic, N.J., Umbers, K.D.L. and Song, H. 2013. Molecular phylogeny of the Kosciuscola grasshoppers endemic to the Australian alpine and montane regions. Invertebrate Systematics. 27: 307–316. We also got the cover page!

Jun 23, 2013
Hojun, Ricardo, and Derek are visiting the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia for 4 days. ANSP is the best orthopteran collection in the world, and we will image type specimens of Pyrgomorphidae and borrow valuable specimens.

Jun 21, 2013
NSF CAREER-sponsored summer course, Integrative Biology, is successfully completed. The students who enrolled in this course learned valuable lessons on fieldwork, scientific methods, and experimental design. Their final talks were very good!

Jun 14, 2013
Tyler and Cody returned from a 3-week expedition to collect different populations of Schistocerca lineata.

May 13, 2013
A new summer research course supported by the CAREER award titled, "Integrative Biology (BSC3930)," will begin on May 14. Eight students have enrolled in this course to learn about field ecology, laboratory experiments and scientific communication using Schistocerca.

May 13, 2013
The Song Lab has just learned that a collaborative grant with Dr. Nik Tatarnic (Western Australian Museum) from the Hermon Slade Foundation will be funded to study the phylogenomics of the Australian chameleon grasshopper genus Kosciuscola!

Mar 28, 2013
Two new publications from Song Lab! Check out our publication page.

Mar 21, 2013
Ricardo was awarded the Entomological Society of America SysEB Student Travel Award ($1500) to conduct a field expedition to study the biology and ecology of Sphenarium in Mexico. Congratulations!

Feb 28, 2013
Members of the Song Lab are presenting at the 2013 SEEC meeting (http://seeconference.wordpress.com/) this weekend.

Feb 28, 2013
Hojun had a month-long expedition of the Australian alpines. He came back with hundreds of grasshoppers!

Feb 27, 2013
Derek and Ricardo participated in the Orthoptera Species File training session at the INHS.

Feb 6, 2013
Hojun's new paper titled, "Uncovering historical signature of mitochondrial DNA hidden in the nuclear genome: the biogeography of Schistocerca revisited" is published as early view in Cladistics!

Feb 1, 2013
The Orthoptera Species File Grant titled, "ENHANCING DIGITAL CONTENT FOR PYRGOMORPHIDAE (ORTHOPTERA: CAELIFERA) IN THE ORTHOPTERA SPECIES FILE" was funded!

Feb 1, 2013
Hojun is off to Australia for a month to collect wingless grasshoppers in Australian alpines.

Dec 10, 2012
Congrats to Tyler who successfully defended his thesis proposal on December 10, 2012!

Dec 3, 2012
Sandeep's first publication titled, "Exposure to exogenous enkephalins disrupts reproductive development in the Eastern lubber grasshopper, Romalea microptera (Insecta: Orthoptera)" was published in PLOS One. Congrats!

Nov 28, 2012
Great news to the Song Lab! Dr. Song has learned that he will receive a CAREER award of $787,000 starting February 2013 for his project titled, "CAREER: Evolution of Locust Swarms and Phenotypic Plasticity in Grasshoppers."

Nov 16, 2012
Song Lab attended the Entomological Society of America meeting. Derek, Ricardo, Tyler, Steve, and Sandeep presented their research in student competition. Ricardo was also invited to give a talk on Mexican Orthoptera in a separate symposium. Hojun gave a talk as well.

Oct 25, 2012
Dr. Rosaura Mayen-Estrada from UNAM, a world-renown protozoologist, also Ricardo's MS advisor, visited Song Lab for three days.

Oct 15, 2012
Hojun was invited to give a departmental seminar at UGA.

Aug 24, 2012
Hojun has been selected as the vice-president elect for SysEB of the Entomological Society of America.

Aug 24, 2012
Hojun and Ricardo attended the International Congress of Entomology in Daegu, Korea. Hojun delivered three talks and Ricardo presented a talk on pyrgomorphid phylogeny.

Aug 15, 2012
Congratulations to Derek Woller for winning $1000 grant from the Orthopterists' Society! Way to go Derek!

Jul 10, 2012
Paolo Fontana from Italy, who also accompanied Derek and Ricardo's trip to Mexico visited the Song Lab on July 2-10, 2012. While he visited, he worked tirelessly on several taxonomic projects.

May 7, 2012
Check out the photo section! Mexico trip pix and BioBiltz pix are up!

May 4, 2012
Steve Gotham and Christy Bitzer-Jaffe graduated as biology majors from UCF! Well done guys!

Apr 16, 2012
Song Lab participated in the BioBlitz in the Wekiwa Basin on April 14-15. A large number of students from the biology department joined and had a blast. Thanks Derek for coordinating everything. Pictures coming soon!

Apr 5, 2012
Steve and Gaby presented their posters at the 2012 Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence. The presentations looked good! Steve won the Honorable Mention award. Congrats!

Mar 19, 2012
Steve Gotham received the UCF's RAMP Fellowship for his M.S. degree in the Song Lab. Awesome job, Steve!!! Congratulations!!!

Mar 13, 2012
Congratulations to Tyler Raszick for receiving the Orthopterists' Society Grant to carry out his research on Schistocerca lineata!

Feb 12, 2012
Hojun and Tyler attended the Future of Evo-Devo Meeting held in Portland, Oregon. It was an enlightening meeting!

Nov 24, 2011
Derek and Ricardo will conduct a two-week expedition to southern Mexico and Guatemala to collect grasshoppers in December.

Nov 16, 2011
Tyler, Steve, Sandeep and Hojun went to the Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America and gave oral presentations. Everyone did very well!

Aug 11, 2011
Derek Woller and Ricardo Marino Perez have joined the Song Lab starting this fall. Welcome!

Jul 21, 2011
Hojun, Tyler, and Steve went on a 5000-mile expedition to collect different populations of Schistocerca lineata in Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. We were successful at bringing back live specimens of four different ecotypes of S. lineata. Please check out pictures taken during the trip.

Jun 24, 2011
NSF summer research workshop in systematic entomology ended on June 24, 2011. Three participants traveled across Central Florida and collected over 1000 specimens of grasshoppers and learns tons about biology and taxonomy of grasshoppers. Please check out their photos in the Photo Link.

Jun 3, 2011
Song Lab went to Disney Wilderness Preserve to collect grasshoppers. We rode a swamp boggy and it was fun! Thanks Jen and B for all your help!

May 20, 2011
Song Lab visited the Florida State Collection of Arthropods in Gainesville to examine Orthoptera collection.

May 16, 2011
NSF-sponsored summer workshop on systematic entomology started today. This 6-week program is geared toward providing research opportunities to underrepresented students in science. This year, three students, Gabriella Alava, Ojochide Shaibu, and Chantalle Maragh, have been selected to participate in the workshop. They will learn a lot about Orthoptera this summer!

May 6, 2011
The newest piece of equipment added to our lab is the BK Plus System from Visionary Digital. Roy Larimer came out for a week, walking us through how to take incredibly detailed photos of insects.

Apr 4, 2011
Prospective PhD student Derek Woller visited the Song Lab. He is going to join the Song Lab in the fall 2011.

Apr 1, 2011
YES/RAMP scholar Steve Gotham presented his first scientific poster at the UCF Showcase of Undergraduate Research Experiences (SURE). His poster focused on the molecular phylogeny of the lubber grasshopper family Romaleidae.

Mar 10, 2011
Dr. Song received the UCF In-House Grant to conduct a comparative behavioral study of Schistocerca.

Jan 26, 2011
Our lab now has the EthoVision XT to study behavioral plasticity of Schistocerca! We had an interesting training session and learned a lot about Excel. :)

Jan 17, 2011
The Song Lab went on a brief field trip to the Florida Keys in search of Schistocerca. We have successfully collected an endemic population of Schistocerca (we dont' know what species it is yet) and we plan to start a colony.

Jan 10, 2011
Our lab is growing! Tyler Raszick joined the lab as a lab manager and he will start his Master's in the fall semester. Matt Vickers also joined the lab. Matt is an EXCEL scholar. Finally, Vinnie Coello joined the lab as a volunteer.

Dec 7, 2010
Steve was awarded the UCF OUR Student Research Grant with a project titled, "Study of the Effect of Tactile Stimulus in Inducing Behavior and Color Plasticity in a Sedentary grasshopper Schistocerca americana." Congratulations Steve, you rock!

Nov 22, 2010
Christy Bitzer-Jaffe joined the Song Lab. She is interested conservation genetics. Welcome Christy!

Nov 22, 2010
After awkward transitional period, the Song Lab has finally moved in to a bigger space and we are beginning to operate! Yay!

Nov 10, 2010
Hojun Song, “Density-Dependent Phase Polyphenism in Nonmodel Locusts: A Minireview,” Psyche, vol. 2011, Article ID 741769, 16 pages, 2011. doi:10.1155/2011/741769. See publication tab.

Nov 5, 2010
Lab move is almost complete! Thanks Steve for all your hard work!

Nov 4, 2010
-80 Freezer is here for frozen tissue collection!

Oct 19, 2010
We now have cabinets and drawers in our lab to house the synoptic collection of Acridomorpha of the world. These specimens will be studied for the evolution of male genitalia.

Oct 4, 2010
Our lab now has a large colony of Schistocerca americana, a small colony of S. rubiginosa, and an ongoing colony of Romalea microptera all locally collected. These grasshoppers will be very useful for studying phenotypic plasticity.

Oct 1, 2010
We now have three Biorad C1000's. We are ready for some serious PCR work!

Sep 30, 2010
Our lab is now equipped with high-end Leica stereomicrocopes (two M80's and one M205C). Awesome scopes will help us conduct taxonomic studies smoothly.

Sep 29, 2010
Steve Gotham, a junior in biology, joined our lab. He is supported by UCF RAMP/YES program and he will be working on the phylogeography of lubber grasshoppers.

Sep 18, 2010
The website is now up and running!