Hello! My name is Jessica. I am a Ph.D. candidate in the McBride lab group in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute at Princeton University. I am broadly interested in the evolution of animal behaviours and their neural and genetic basis. In the neuroethology tradition, I am especially fascinated by behaviours in animals that are uniquely good at what they do.

My current work centres on the yellow-fever mosquito Aedes aegypti. The ancestral "forest" form of the mosquito appears to be a generalist blood-feeder, with no strong preference for any particular host. In striking contrast, the recently derived "domestic" form exhibits a strong innate preference for feeding on humans and has thus become one of the most important vectors of mosquito-borne human disease. This remarkable behavioural shift evolved in just a few thousand years. I am working to understand the evolution of olfactory receptors involved in this shift in preference by using a number of different approaches—including volatile-chemical analysis, theoretical modelling, molecular genetics, and transgenics. Part of this work is included in this preprint.