| NEWS |

8/16/2024: Welcome Sejal to the lab! Sejal is joining us as a Postbac fellow for this academic year. With a strong background in mathematics and ornithology, Sejal is developing bayesian tools to model species distributions.

7/15/2024: Weird communication... weird animals! Ignacio was interviewed in an episode of the science podcast Data Skeptic, produced and recorded by Kyle Polich. Episode here.
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7/11/2024: New paper out! As part of an international collaboration between engineers and biologists, we reviewed the available knowledge about hard-bodied mobile robots based on arthropod morphologies. Paper available here on Bioinspiration & Biomimetics.

7/09/2024: Welcome Noah to the lab! Noah Skelly is joining the lab as a graduate student this summer. Noah has a strong background in animal behavior and entomology.

7/01/2024: Welcome Sage to the lab! Sage DeLong joined the lab as a graduate student. Sage has extensive knowledge and experience working with insects and arachnids in the Lake Michigan Area. 

6/14/2024: We are hiring a postdoctoral researcher to work on a funded project regarding the aggregation behavior and chemical communication of Neotropical Opiliones (see add on the right). Please contact Ignacio (iem[at]uic[dot]edu) for more information. 

5/23/2024: New paper out! We studied what factors allow 'baby spiders' (aka spiderlings) to improve their prey capture abilities. It's 'old' data from my Masters at U Costa Rica but analyzed with fresh eyes and tools in collaboration with colleagues at UW Milwaukee. Open access paper here! 

5/12/2024: The lab is opening soon! This Fall 2024, the Behavioral Ecology and Biomechanics lab at the University of Illinois - Chicago will formally open. I'm very excited to launch the lab with an amazing group of people. We'll launch the website soon... If you're interested in collaborating with or applying to the lab, check out the "The Lab" tab and stay tuned for more opportunities to join funded projects.

4/17/2024: I gave an invited seminar in CIPRONA, the research center of the Chemistry Department at my alma mater, the Universidad de Costa Rica (see poster on the right). I presented my ongoing project in chemical communication in Opiliones. This project is now done in collaboration with colleagues at CIPRONA.
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2/05/2024: In their section “outside JEB”, the Journal of Experimental Biology covered our 2023 paper on wolf spider biomechanics. There, we explored the environmental and morphological constraints of the locomotion of these arachnids in a tropical highland biome where temperatures fluctuate greatly on a daily basis. Coverage here. 

1/27/2024: Tropical Ecology & Conservation teaching. This Spring, I am participating in a field class in Costa Rica. This class is offered by the Organization for Tropical Studies to graduate students from 6 Latin American countries. We visit 3 environments, conduct short research projects, and visit conservation and restoration projects. (See pictures above).

01/03/2024: Invited conference symposium talk. I presented at the 2024 Annual meeting Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) in Seattle, WA, USA. My talk Recovering from voluntary bodily damage: Robust locomotion in Opiliones, was part of an amazing symposium titled "Moving in an uncertain world: Adaptive locomotion from organisms to machine intelligence".

12/12/2023: New paper out now! We experimentally tested the potential function of a 'novel' signal type in the signaling repertoire of male treehoppers. These amazing insects communicate using vibrations transmitted through plants! This was a very fun collaboration with undergraduate students in Wisconsin. The paper is available in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology here. 

11/15/2023: A lab collaborator won a student award at the Entomological Society of America 2023 meeting!! Damián Villaseñor-Amador, first author of our 2023 paper in Animal Behaviour won 1st place on the "On-Demand Student Competition 10-Minute Papers" (more information here).

10/31/2023: New paper out now! In a tropical ecology field class in Costa Rica, we studied the locomotor behavior of wolf spiders. We found that temperature and body size affect velocity, but carrying an egg sac does not. The paper is available in Animal Behaviour here. 

10/01/2023: Launching new projects at UIC. This Fall, my research group is starting two exciting projects: (1) In collaboration with Honor's College student Evelin Muñoz, we're studying the chemical ecology of opiliones. (2) In collaboration with postbac fellow Aman Siddiqui, we're exploring the potential neural plasticity after leg loss in opiliones. Both projects involved local fieldwork in Chicago with species of Leiobunum. (Lab members' pictures on the right). 

09/20/2023: Local fieldwork in the Chicago area established! This Summer and early Fall we've conducted fieldwork surveying for opiliones (mostly of Leiobunum) and conducting field and lab experiments studying their behavioral ecology. We have 5 field sites in NW Cook County, IL, along the forest preserves in the North Branch of the Chicago River and the Des Plaines River. 

08/05/2023: New paper out! We studied the influence of the social context in which animals develop (growing next to their own species versus with other species) on the reproductive traits in adults, particularly signal production and preference. The paper is out on The American Naturalist, available here. 

05/05/2023: I gave an invited presentation in the series 'Radical Research from BIPOC Scholars' at the Rafael Cintrón Ortiz Latino Cultural Center, University of Illinois - Chicago. Presentation available here.

04/27/2023: Di una presentación virtual en el seminario 'Plagiodontia' del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural Profesor Eugenio de Jesús Marcano, de la República Dominicana. La presentación está disponible aquí.

04/01/2023: I participated in the US Midwest regional meeting of the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology (SICB) at The University of Chicago. I presented my work on the ‘Benefits and costs of dynamic mixed-species aggregations of Neotropical Opiliones’. You can read part of that work here.

02/14/2023: A -preliminary- field guide of the Opliones species of one of my field sites: Las Cruces Research Station, in Coto Brus, Costa Rica. It's in a 16:9 format, so it's convenient to open on a cellphone. Click here for the pdf. 

01/04/2023: I presented my research on the reproductive function of substrate-borne vibrations of treehoppers at the SICB conference (Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology), in Austin, TX, USA. It was great to see tons of cool research, and great outdoor spaces, and catch up with old and new friends and colleagues!

11/14/2022: [outreach resources just made available]
Te interesa oir más sobre la experiencia de estudiar en otro país, estado, provincia o región? En la Red de Aracnología Emergente Latinoamericana (RAEL) entrevistamos a 7 personas que lo hicieron, y en este documento resumimos su experiencia, y te damos consejos de qué cosas tener en cuenta.

10/25/2022: New paper out! We described and differentiate an additional signal type in the vibrational signal repertoire of males of two species of treehoppers from Wisconsin, USA. You can access the paper here. 

10/12/2022: New paper out today! Through a great collaboration with colleagues in Austria we found that there is great variation between species in one genus of harvestmen (Opiliones) in the array of chemical compounds they secrete! We also found that the composition can vary between juveniles and adults even in the same species. Open access paper here in Frontiers of Ecology and Evolution.

8/16/2022: New chapter in Chicago! I just started a postdoctoral fellowship through the Bridge to Faculty Program at the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Illinois - Chicago, USA. You can read more information about the program here.
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7/21/2022: [conference] Some males of two treehopper species produce a female-mimic signal in their vibratory courtship display, but why? I presented some hypotheses testing the function of that signal in the Animal Behavior Society meeting in my hometown San José, Costa Rica! (the manuscript is in press, so more soon...)
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6/07/2022: ¿Quieres asistir a congresos científicos? ¿Quieres saber sobre cómo es esa experiencia? En la Red de Aracnología Emergente Latinoamericana (RAEL) tuvimos un conversatorio sobre la importancia de los congresos.
Puedes leer el resumen aquí y/o ver el video aquí. (*também disponível em português)

5/3/2022: Charla sobre los efectos de patas en opiliones. En 2020 di una charla virtual para el Laboratorio de Biología Reproductiva de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. Puedes ver el video aquí. 
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2/25/2022: Te interesa saber un poco más sobre el financiamiento para la ciencia? En la Red de Aracnología Emergente Latinoamericana (RAEL) tuvimos un conversatorio sobre el proceso de financiar proyectos de investigación y estudios. Puedes leer el resumen aquí y/o ver el video aquí. (*também disponível em português)

1/18/2022: How would losing legs affect the reproduction of animals that use their legs to court? In our latest paper we explored this question in males of a species of harvestmen from Costa Rica. We found that males that lost two sensory or locomotor legs had similar mating success as eight-legged males. This suggests the robustness of these animals to morphological damage, and the absence of fitness consequences of leg loss in this group. Open-access article here.

1/11/2022: New paper out today! We reviewed the benefits and costs of mixed-species aggregations in harvestmen (Opiliones, 'daddy long-legs'), studied the potential benefits and costs of these aggregations in seven species from Costa Rica, and found that new individuals from different species join the groups every day! Open-access article here.

8/02/2021: I was interviewed (along with other researchers) for a great article on The Atlantic on the evolution and function of legs in harvestmen. Article here. 

7/14/2021:  New paper out! When harvestmen (daddy long-legs) lose sensory legs their habitat use changes, but their survival seems unaffected. Open access paper here.

6/02/2021:  Lanzamos la Red de Aracnología Emergente Latina (RAEL), para apoyar a la comunidad de investigador@s latin@s emergentes que estudian arácnidos. Más información y formas de colaborar aquí. 

1/15/2021:  Costa Rican science! I participated in the 1st Virtual Symposium on Biology, Conservation, Ecology, and Evolution by Costa Rican scientists abroad Video here (talk is in Spanish).
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12/17/2020: Here's a talk in which I presented about the multi-specific aggregations in harvestmen (talk is in Spanish). This was an invited plenary talk for the 2020 virtual Latino American Arachnological Congress.

12/05/2020: Podcast episode! I was interviewed in an episode of the science communication podcast Fragmentos de Okazaki. Episode (in Spanish) here. 

11/27/2020: NEW PAPER! How does leg loss affect the energetics of locomotion? Check out our latest paper in which we measured the endurance and oxygen consumption in a species of harvestmen from California. This research was done in collaboration with Veronica Ellis, a former undergrad researcher. Also, thanks to the funding from UC Berkeley's SMART Program. Paper available here on the Journal of Comparative Physiology A.

08/13/2020: NEW PAPER OUT! How does morphological damage affect animal locomotion and behavior? Can they recover and/or compensate for those consequences? Our latest paper exploring these questions on harvestmen is available here on Scientific Reports.

07/01/2020: I am very excited to share that I will join Rafa Rodríguez's Lab at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee as a post-doctoral researcher starting in August 2020. 

05/08/2020: This summer I will graduate with a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. Here's a summary of my dissertation research, plus info about my involvement in teaching, mentorship & outreach.

11/26/2019: Harvestmen talk abroad. I gave the Tupper Seminar at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panamá City, Panamá. I talked about my major findings in the my PhD for the consequences of leg loss in kinematics, physiology, ecology, and mating success of Neotropical harvestmen. Talk here (scroll for Nov 26, 2019). 

07/01/2019: The ecology and evolution of autotomy, new review out. Access here.

06/03/2019: Chemical ecology of harvestmen? I uploaded a preprint to PeerJ about this topic. It's an assortment of potentially testable ideas regarding how daddy long-legs might be using chemical signals to communicate, defend themselves and/or mark roosting sites. I look forward to getting feedback and comments about it. Access here. 

05/07/2019: Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award. Thank you to UC Berkeley's Graduate Division for this recognition. I taught (TA-ed) Animal Behavior on Fall 2018. More info here.

04/19/2019: Paper's out! We described the diversity of locomotor gaits for Neotropical harvestmen. Access to the paper on the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society here.

03/03/2019: See you on Twitter. Check out latest updates on science communication, outreach and more on my twitter account.

10/18/2018: Mentoring and daddy long-legs on a treadmill! I wrote a short piece about a mentorship program I participated in last summer at the UC Berkeley campus. Post here.

04/10/2018:  Thank you International Society for Behavioral Ecology (ISBE) for giving me financial support to attend the 2018 meeting in Minneapolis, USA. Looking forward for another amazing conference!

04/03/2018:  This semester I participated in the Graduate Student Assessment Fellowship Program, hosted by the Center of Teaching and Learning at UC Berkeley. A great opportunity to engage in evaluating the ways education is being offered, and to contribute in making the college experience better. More info here. 

03/12/2018:  I received the second prize of UC Berkeley's Graduate Division Distinguished Fellow video contest. Info here.

02/21/2018:  My department (ESPM) at UC Berkeley put together a great story on the professional development program I teach (Berkeley Connect). Read it here.

12/08/2017:  I won the best student ecology/behavior talk during the 5th Latin American Congress of Arachnology last week in Brazil! I presented about my dissertation research at UC Berkeley Pictures here. 

11/16/2017:  Tropical Biology and a Fragment Landscape. I wrote a short blog entry  for UC Berkeley's Graduate Division newsletter about my summer research in Costa Rica. Read it here! 

10/26/2017: The Elias and the Gillespie labs from UC Berkeley participated on the California Academy of Sciences’ Nightlife Halloween edition last week in San Francisco, CA. We had a great time showing people daddy long-legs, scorpions, spiders et al! Tons of great questions and a lot of interested from the attendees! Some pictures by Ashley Adams here. 

09/26/2017:  I participated in the Nerd Nite East Bay by giving an outreach talk about my research for a general audience, in Oakland ,California, USA.

08/22/2017: Bay Area's KQED did an episode for their show 'Deep Look' on my research, and it aired today, here it is! They also wrote a post about it. Their work is amazing! I'm thrilled that I was able to host them in the lab for this episode. 

06/12/2017: Most of us from the Elias Lab participated in the 2017 Animal Behavior Society meeting in Toronto, Canada. I presented some results from my dissertation research (see picture on the right).

05/04/2017: I received the 2017 Bob Lane and Sandy Purcell Graduate Summer Award from my department (ESPM - UC Berkeley). Thank you very much to the donors, since this contribution will make my 2017 summer field research possible. I'll be studying the behavioral ecology of daddy long-legs at Las Cruces Biological Station, in awesome Costa Rica!

06/12/2017: I edited a video for an outreach event in the Oakland Zoo. Video here!

04/20/2017: Thanks to the Animal Behavior Society for granting me one Diversity Travel Award! This will help me attend their annual meeting in Toronto, Canada this summer. 

04/07/2017: Thanks to the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) for granting me with the Glaxo Centro America Fellowship! This will fund my summer 2017 field research in Southern Costa Rica. 

03/04/2017: New outreach posters of the some arachnids of 2 field site in Costa Rica and 1 in Panamá, in collaboration with Darko Cotoras. Check them out at the blog page!

02/10/2017: Kate Furby wrote an awesome science communication piece on my research, check it out here!

01/05/2017: I presented a poster about my research at the awesome Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) meeting in New Orleans, LA, USA.

10/16/2016: My blog entree about my past summer research in Barro Colorado Island Panamá was featured in UC Berkeley's Graduate Division newsletter, and in UC Berkeley's Center for Latin American Studies website (which partially funded my research). 

08/14/2016: Why some arthropods vibrate? Check out this video I've put together from this summer's footage. I look forward for feedback and ideas on how and why craneflies, spiders and harvestmen vibrate.

07/29/2016: I had a great time at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology meeting, in Exeter, England. I presented preliminary data of my dissertation on the behavioral plasticity in locomotion promoted by loosing legs in harvestmen. The meeting had an outstanding line-up of plenary lectures, and hundreds of great talks. It was great to get to know what behav ecol labs are researching in Europe. 

07/06/2016: most of us in the Elias lab attended the International Congress of Arachnology in Colorado, USA. A vibrant community with awesome people doing very interesting research worldwide. 

03/28/2016: New paper on the effect of substrate roughness and autotomy on the locomotion of Neotropical daddy-long legs. Domínguez et al. 2016 (paper here); 11 Latin American biologists from 8 different countries doing research in Southern Costa Rica.

02/12/2016: Big shout out to Kelsey Foster and Wei Liu!, undergraduate students at the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley, for helping me this semester with my research. Analyzing videos, data-basing harvestmen in the Essig Museum of Entomology collection, and collecting daddy long-legs in Berkeley. Both are in our lab through the SPUR program, check it out! (Funding and credits to engage in research on campus). 

02/08/2016: New paper published on the reproductive behavior of the South American spitting spider! (Cohelo, Escalante, and Aisenberg 2016).
Check it out here! Along with a whole issue of the Uruguay Zoological Society Bulletin dedicated to arachnid research!! 

11/23/2015: New paper soon to be published on harvestmen locomotion. Check the press release one of the co-authors wrote.

11/09/15:  The tougher the task, the greater the effort! A new paper published on the Journal of Insect Behavior, derived from my masters, studying the predatory plasticity in naïve spiders.  Access to the paper here.

04/13/15:  A new paper published on the Journal of Ethology about the behavioural interplay between two coexisting spider species. I conducted field and lab work in Uruguay, with Anita Aisenberg and Fernando Costa. Access to the paper here.

11/10/14:  A new paper published in Behavioral Processes on the multimodal sensory performance during homing in an amblypygyd from Costa Rica. Part of the research was done while I was a student in the field course Ecology & Evolution of Arachnids, by the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) in La Selva Biological Station, early this year. Access to the paper here. 


10/27/14: I am preparing a talk for this week's seminar of the UC Berkeley Essig Mussuem of Entomology. Come this Friday (10-31) at 10am to the "fish bowl" in the first floor of the Valley Life Sciences Building if you want to hear spider behavior nonesense. The talk is entittled: "Plasticity in predatory behaviors of spiders: from Spitting to Wrapping". Coffee and bagels provided!


10/21/14: New paper published in Arachnology, with former classmate Marianela Masís-Calvo. It will be available online soon, but you can ask me for a reprint. 

Escalante, I. & M. Masís-Calvo. 2014. The absence of gumfoot threads in webs of early juveniles and males of Physocyclus globosus (Pholcidae) is not associated with spigot morphology. Arachnology 16: 214-218.  

09/29/14: Personal research website just launched!  This is my first time building a webpage, so (as a disclaimer), please bear with my no-so-flashy website skills. 
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Coverage of our 2023 paper on the biomechanics of wolf spiders on the section "outside JEB" of the Journal of Experimental Biology
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UIC's Honor's College student Evelin Muñoz and postbac fellow Aman Siddiqui
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2023 field site in the Chicago River, Cook Co., IL, USA.
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Collecting treehoppers (Membracidae) in Saukville, Wisconsin, USA. June 2022.
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Photo by Wenjing Xu
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My talk at the ABS meeting. June 2017, Toronto, Canada.