Christine R. Lattin, PhD

@clattin.bsky.social

1576 Followers 1268 Following

Associate Professor at LSU trying to understand how hormones & neurotransmitters help wild animals successfully cope with environmental challenges. She/her

LSU Archivist Zachary Tompkins turns pages in Folio 4 of Audubon’s Birds of North America. The page is open to the Trumpeter Swan. Birds are life size.
Marquise and his cat, in latte foam
Caroline Henry presents research on her Senior Honors Thesis project on the microbiome of green and brown anoles.
Closeup image of a wild azalea flower
A photo of a Louisiana iris with three bright purple blooms on the stalk.
A graph showing that sparrows that were more willing to feed in the presence of a novel object (left side of the graph) also performed shorter bouts of a beak wiping behavior compared to sparrows that were less willing to approach and feed (right side of the graph). This suggests that neophobic sparrows may also be more anxious. Figure is adapted from Figure 2 of Masri et al. 2026.
Several kids at a table watch LSU postbacc Ellie Rice arm wrestle a student to see the electrical impulses made by her arm muscles. Suman Gunin and Katie Stewart look on.
Expression of genes in the blue (top) and turquoise (bottom) modules (created using weighted gene co-expression network analysis) were significantly associated with novelty avoidance behaviour in female Eurasian tree sparrows but not in males. The graphs show an increase in the approach time of sparrows towards food paired with novel objects with increased expression of the blue module, and a decrease in approach time with increased expression of the turquoise module, in female but not male sparrows.
A group of barnacles on a cliffside at Sharkham Point, Brixham, one of the many species beloved by naturalist Charles Darwin. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and user Partonez.
Roseate spoonbills feeding in shallow water, alongside some swimming ducks
A photo of a window in the LSU Our Lady of the Lake Interdisciplinary Science Building, showing bird safe glass with a repeating pattern of black vertical stripes
Paper samples made by out of plants that are invasive in Louisiana, including mimosa, alligator weed, Japanese climbing fern and water hyacinth.
The cover of David Stipp's new book, "Why Rats Laugh & Jellyfish Sleep: And Other Enchanting Stories of Evolution," showing Charles Darwin sitting on a jellyfish.
Michelle and a friend sitting under the moonlight on the side of Mount Shasta. They started their climb that morning at 3 am! Photo courtesy of Michelle Stantial.
Beth MacDougall-Shackleton and the Silver Spotlight Players performing “Shakin’ at the High School Hop” from Grease: The Musical. Photo courtesy of Beth MacDougall-Shackleton.
Quinn working on painting a miniature. (Photo credit: Amanda Harvey).
Kelton sport climbing in Thailand as an Assistant Professor. Photo credit: Mac McMahon.
LSU researcher Jena Bordelon chats with LSU Interim President Dr. Matt Lee about her research on improving the food environment in Louisiana schools.
Katharina and her daughter, Hanna, sailing. Photo courtesy of Mario Stanke.
Undergraduate Danna Masri receives the Undergraduate Teaching Award from the LSU Department of Biological Sciences and Dr. Christine Lattin receives the Graduate Teaching Award from the LSU College of Science.
Kristina Smiley sings karaoke at the Majestic in Northampton Massachusetts. Photo courtesy of Kristina Smiley.
Data from Lynch et al. 2025 showing that only 2% of all turkeys sampled (out of 106 total) were free from all avian malaria infections. 8% had Leucocytozoon, Haemoproteus, and Plasmodium, 30% had two strains of malaria, and 60% were infected with a single strain of malaria.
This image gives the background for the Dusang and Henry 2025 paper. The image reads: "Neophobia is often evaluated in only one context. Assumed that an animal's response to one type of novel stimulus is consistent with another". There are three images, one of a food dish with yellow coiled pipe cleaners with the label "novel objects," one of a house sparrow taking a potato chip from a bowl with the label "novel foods," and one of a city landscape with office towers with the label "novel environments." Double-headed arrows connect all three images.
Undergraduate researcher Danna Masri presents work on links between neophobia and other behaviors in sparrows
Sara Wang gives a talk summarizing her PhD dissertation research
Hermione Lam, Ilea Kuo, and Danna Masri
A snapping turtle on a path
Survival curves of sparrows' latency to feed in the presence of novel objects with and without injections of a vehicle control (top graph) or the glucocorticoid receptor antagonist RU486 (bottom graph). There was no difference between weeks or treatments, suggesting the effects of corticosterone on neophobia that we previously observed are mediated via a different physiological mechanism.
Large anthill from a Texas leaf cutter ant colony seen in Kisatchie National Forest
A very small long leaf pine (which just looks like a tuft of green wires)
A red dwarf sundew carnivorous plant with a tiny black beetle stuck to it
Photo of pink wild azalea flowers in front of a forest backdrop
Lattin Lab PhD student Marquise Henry uses arm wrestling to show nerve impulses in an active muscle via electromyography
Award-winning SPDAC sticker design by SICB member and graduate student Joseph Wu.
A group of smiling people wearing festive attire and holding up holiday gifts.
Undergraduate researcher Ella Cochran receives her honors hood and cord from Drew Lamonica Arms from the LSU Ogden Honors College.
Two graphs showing that the smallest European starling nestlings from asynchronously-hatching nests have higher baseline corticosterone and lower stress-induced corticosterone compared to the smallest nestlings from synchronously-hatching nests.
A version of the "Two Buttons" meme where the buttons say "fat" and "water" and the text on the sweating superhero image says "what do camels store in their humps?"
A version of the "obsessive girlfriend" meme where the girlfriend is labeled "anaerobic glycolysis" and text around her says "I'll keep producing ATP even if you stop breathing"
A version of the "distracted boyfriend" meme where the boyfriend is labeled "actin" the annoyed girlfriend is labeled "troponin" and the girl in the red dress is labeled "myosin head".
A version of the Left Exit 12 Off Ramp meme (car veering dangerously from the main lane to a right exit), where the main lane is "normal temperature regulation (sweating, panting, etc.)" the exit is "peeing on yourself" and the car is labeled "vultures".
Graphs showing increased prevalence and abundance of four specific bacteria in the gut microbiomes of malaria-resistant house sparrows.
Crawfish painted on a mug
Color-coded latency difference scores (latency to touch food in the novel object condition minus latency in the control condition; measured in seconds) for all bird species included in ManyBirds study 1 (n = 136).
A moth with white wings with dark edges and a fuzzy butt
A photo of a smiling woman next to a purple beam covered in signatures
A smiling group of people sitting at a table in a pottery studio, holding up mugs that they have painted
Emily Ray with dissertation committee members Christine Lattin, Patricia Schneider, and Evanna Gleason.
Wild stingless bees on and near a couple of small nests
A large brown moth with small eyespots on its forewings clings to a blue door
Christine Lattin and Keegan Stansberry stand under a live oak tree in academic regalia. Keegan holds his degree.
An image showing a house sparrow on the left with the text "first introduced in 1851" and its current range in North America encompassing the whole United States, parts of Canada, and Mexico, and a Eurasian tree sparrow on the right with the text "first introduced in 1870" and its current range which includes a small area of the United States around St Louis Missouri.
A photo of a manatee swimming underwater
Figure 2 from Kimball et al. 2024, "Conspecific alarm calls prevent the attenuation of neophobia behavior in wild-caught house sparrows (Passer domesticus)". Shows two Kaplan-Meier survival curves of average house sparrow feeding likelihood in the presence of nine different novel objects over three weeks of testing. Playback treatments were played during week 2 only. Sparrows' latency to feed in presence of a novel object significantly decreased over three weeks for individuals exposed to no playback and sparrow contact calls (top graph where lines are shown in blue, n = 23), but stayed consistent for individuals exposed to sparrow alarm calls (bottom graph where lines are shown in red; n = 12). Shading shows 95% confidence intervals.
Keegan Stansberry presents his PhD research during his dissertation defense.
A swallowtail caterpillar on a fennel plant
Chanterelles growing from the forest floor.
Tal sits and plays her violin in her hometown of Arad, Israel. Photo courtesy of Tal Ohana.
Christine Lattin and Melanie Kimball pose for a photo in their PhD regalia.