Cassie Vernier

Cassie Vernier is a first year PhD student in the Evolution, Ecology and Population Biology program at Washington University. She received her BS from the University of Michigan, where she spent her undergraduate career as a member of the Tibbetts lab. Working under Elizabeth Tibbetts and (then) graduate student Amanda Izzo, she used the Polistes paper wasp system to study the role of sexual and social signals in mediating conflict, as well as the link between hormone titers and behavior. For her honors thesis, she measured and compared fluctuating asymmetry levels across sexes and traits of Polistes dominulus paper wasps, in order to determine the influence of ploidy and condition dependence on developmental stability. In the Strassmann/Queller lab, she hopes to continue to study conflict within social systems.