Lab and field: A love for insects inspired an undergrad’s research — which was just published

In Leah Rosenheim’s California hometown, praying mantis are everywhere — perched on flowers and secreted in lawns, with their characteristic folded forelimbs.

Rosenheim, the daughter of an entomologist, found them fascinating. During her senior year of high school, she noticed that the native species Stagmomantis limbata came in various colors, often closely matched to nearby plants.

“There was a light yellow one on a sunflower, and another one — which was brown — on a brown plant. It made me wonder: What’s going on?” she recounted.

Her father suggested that she conduct an experiment to answer that question. So, she did — and recently had the results published in the journal Ecology and Evolution. Her co-authors include her father, Jay Rosenheim, and Michael Maxwell, who did his doctoral dissertation on the same praying mantis species at the University of California, Davis. He has continued to study them extensively at National University in California.

“While many Binghamton undergraduates publish scientific papers, it is rare for those papers to be truly led by the students rather than faculty. Leah did this very much on her own, which is a huge accomplishment,” said Binghamton University Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Thomas H.Q. Powell.

From brown to green and in-between

To start the project, Rosenheim collected egg cases from her neighborhood in Davis; when the mantises hatched, they were raised in either green or brown containers to determine whether they change color. She also assessed whether they choose a background that matches their adult coloration.

It turns out that S. limbata praying mantises start out pale when they hatch; as they grow, most turn green while others turn brown. Nymphs change color gradually, typically shifting more green or brown during the course of several weeks and over multiple instars. A few, however, bucked the trend and changed color from green to brown after a single molt, she said.

“They do change color to match their background, but it was very messy. There was a significant result, but it wasn’t perfect,” she explained.

During a gap year between high school and college, she read the relevant literature, learned how to analyze data and started writing. Now a senior majoring in biological sciences, Rosenheim continued to work on the paper during winter and summer breaks over the last three years. She hit some obstacles along the way, such as when she first tried to write the introduction and discussion without a thorough research review — a mistake she has since remedied.

These days, she is a member of Powell’s biology lab, where she is investigating whether genetics play a role in how long apple maggot flies over-winter in the soil before emerging as adults. For most, the process takes eight months, but some undergo another full year in the diapause state, she explained.

After graduation, Rosenheim plans to take a year off to go to Israel and potentially do some part-time research. After that, she plans to attend graduate school in biology, she said.

The praying mantis project turned out to be an excellent introduction to research, from beginning to end — as well as a study in persistence.

“There are a lot of points in a project where you can get stuck, and you feel like you’re never going to get it done, but you have to keep chugging along,” Rosenheim said.