The symbiotic relationship between wood-eating termites and hindgut protists is crucial for termite digestion, with protists aiding in lignocellulose degradation. This relationship, dating back to the late Jurassic, resembles the ancestral association between termites and wood roaches, Cryptocercus, established over 150 million years ago. Paraneotermes simplicicornis and Kalotermes flavicollis, members of the Kalotermitidae family, harbor diverse symbiotic communities pivotal for wood digestion and nitrogen fixation. Parabasalians, such as Cristamonadea, exhibit morphological diversity, with some taxa being joeniids, calonymphids, or devescovinids, residing primarily in termite guts. To explore the coevolutionary history and morphological evolution, this study aims to describe devescovinid communities in P. simplicicornis and K. flavicollis using morphological and molecular approaches. Phylogenetic analysis reveals the relationships among Devescovina, Metadevescovina, Macrotrichomonas, and Calonympha. A misidentification of published sequence AB458854 Joenia annectens provides valuable insights into how species are classified, while the discovery of previously unknown symbionts demonstrates the extent of diversity within these ecosystems. Notably, Clade 2 was named Prototermanova, where novel Cristamonadea species were identified, exhibiting genetic and morphological similarities to Devescovina. Similarly, Clade 4 was labelled Trichoterm, where two novel Devescovina species challenged existing taxonomic classifications. DNA sequencing analyses provided additional validation, highlighting the genetic diversity and potential novelty of symbionts within the termite gut. Morphological examination aligns with previously identified genera, and BLAST analysis supports observations of potential novelty in certain symbionts. Protists from P. simplicicornis and K. flavicollis show close relation to Joenia and Devescovina, respectively. This study sheds light on the complexity of termite symbiotic relationships and underscores the need for continued research to fully comprehend protist diversity within termite guts.

The morphological characteristics of organisms are intricately linked to their ecological features. As a result, species with similar ecological niches may exhibit shared morphological traits due to convergent evolution. Some genomic features could be relevant to influencing the occurrence of convergence evolution. Anoles, with over 400 species, are an excellent model for studying this process. Within Anolis, groups of species that have evolved similar morphological traits and ecological adaptations in response to specific environmental niches are described as ecomorphs. One ecomorph, the crown-giant anoles, has independently evolved large body sizes and adapted to arboreal habitats, predominantly occupying the upper canopy layer of forests. The objective of this study was to explore the convergent evolution of morphological traits in crown giant anoles, by comparing the osteological traits of two crown giants, Anolis frenatus, and A. equestris, to four non-crown giant species from different ecomorphs, A. auratus, A. carolinensis, A. biporcatus, and A. sagrei. The analysis indicated an absence of convergence in most morphological traits except for body size (SVL). Additionally, this study explored the potential role of transposable elements (TEs) as a genomic feature shaping the morphological diversity of crown giant anoles. The genes located within TE-rich regions on the genome were identified across selected Anolis species. An enrichment of genes associated with regulation and developmental processes was detected in regions with high TE abundance for all analyzed species, but not exclusive to crown giants. The results suggest that crown giants seem to only converge in their substantial body size and that the variability in other morphological characteristics could be attributed to some other ecological features or the phylogenetic relationships of each species. Moreover, TEs may play a role in facilitating morphological evolution and adaptability in all Anolis species, as they could influence gene expression and regulatory pathways. This highlights the need for further investigation into the genomic mechanisms determining convergent evolution.

StayWell is an app concept that revolutionizes how young adults manage their health information by “Putting the Self-Care in Healthcare.” Allowing users to track both their medical and wellness information in one place, StayWell will act as both a healthcare and self-care app. The main page is a customizable calendar with a pill tracker, habit tracker and appointment tracker. At the bottom of the page, there is a storage feature to hold all of the user’s medical information such as insurance cards, provider contact, lab results, and other documentation. This allows users to track all medical or self-care related information in one convenient app that is fully customizable to match their specific needs, whether it’s tracking a chronic condition or just striving to reach new fitness goals. Our product is currently available for pre-sale via our website which showcases mockups of the user interface. With proper funding we can begin the development of the app and release a beta version to our existing audience who have already signed up for the app pre-sale.

Several narratives exist about the Balkans and people from the region, with the primary narrative often being negative. Many know the region as one of conflict, where neighbors are always squabbling over land and history. This negative narrative has spread into the Balkan Diaspora in the United States and across the globe. This is significant because diasporas are independent actors that actively influence and are connected to the homelands they represent, as Barth and Shain argue in “Diasporas and International Relations Theory”. Currently, there are neither reliable statistics on the number of members of a greater Balkan Diaspora in the United States, nor are there many statistics on the number of members of the individual ethnic diasporas, such as the Serbian Diaspora, Bulgarian Diaspora, Romanian Diaspora, etc. A lot of research that exists on the Balkans is related to the conflicts in the 1990s, helping to shape the negative narrative of the Balkans as a region of prejudice and hate. Additionally, there aren’t enough resources allocated towards the Balkan Diaspora. There is some literature on diasporas in the post-communist world, such as in Koinova’s research on “Diasporas and democratization in the post-communist world”, as well as on ethnic diasporas from across the Balkan region, such as in Prelec’s research on the Serbian Diaspora’s political views and its impact on the 2017 presidential election and Raggazi’s article on the invention of the Croatian Diaspora during the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. There is a lot of existing literature on prominent diasporas in the United States, that are large in both number and geopolitical soft power, such as the Armenian (Bolsajian, 2018) and Greek Diasporas (Kaloudis, 2008). However, there remains a gap when it comes to questions regarding identity and being part of both the Balkan Diaspora and its individual ethnic diasporas in the twenty-first century. Across the US, there are communities for individual ethnic diasporas, such as ethnic Orthodox Churches and Bosnian and Albanian Islamic Centers. However, there isn’t much of a dedicated space for a unified Balkan Diaspora and its members. For example, Balkan Bred is a company that sells products catered towards the former Yugoslav Diaspora and tells former Yuogslav Diaspora members’ stories in the form of blogs. Still, there isn’t a space for the entire Balkan Diaspora that includes both the western, eastern, and southern Balkans communities. Based on these considerations, we pose a few questions for our research: How do we create a space and community for all members of the Balkan Diaspora that is free of hate so we can more positively share our culture and heritage with one another and with the world? How can individual ethnic identities exist in conjunction with a unified Balkan Diasporic identity? The overarching idea is to reconstruct existing narratives about the Balkans as a region of prejudice and conflict by providing a space for members of the Balkan Diaspora to share their stories. The fields of study from which we derive our topic are Eastern European Studies and Global Politics with a thematic focus on Conflict Resolution. There are several goals with this project. We want to share Diaspora members’ stories about their experiences in the United States, related to identity, migration, and ethnicity. We want to build such a community for a unified Balkan Diaspora, initially virtually on social media, and then in-person. We want to share resources about the Balkans and its various ethnic diasporas, for both members of the Diaspora and for those who would like to learn more. We want these resources to be related to topics other than conflict, such as ethnic organizations, communities, articles, and books that celebrate individual ethnic diasporas.