Wheeler Lab @ UWEC

November 2026 - Nic is headed to the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Annual Meeting this November, where he’s giving an invited talk on quantitative ethology of schistosome miracidia. More details to come!

September 2026 - Nic will be a panelist for UWEC’s ORSP Scholarly Spotlight Series this month!

August 2026 - Big turnout at the Midwest Neglected Infectious Diseases Meeting in Madison, WI 🧫 Bailey Stuart, Declan Algrem, Sky Consiglio, Theodore Schwantes, and Sonja Olson all made the trip, presenting three posters — on the tissue origin of miracidia, miracidia photosensation, and mosquito photosensation. Nic gave a lightning talk on ultrawidefield tracking of aquatic parasites and vectors, and joined the meeting’s career panel as an invited panelist.

July 2026 - Nic received the ACMCIP Take-Off Award in Parasitology Research! Read more about it in UWEC’s article:

UW-Eau Claire UW-Eau Claire professor wins national award for undergraduate research with helping hand from amazing students

July 2026 - Nic headed to Orlando, FL for the annual meeting of the American Society of Parasitologists, where he gave a selected talk on extraocular color discrimination in Schistosoma mansoni miracidia (work with Sonja Olson, Bailey Stuart, and Declan Algrem). He also chaired the ASP Student Awards Committee this year, reviewing abstracts and helping award student travel grants.

May 2026 - We say goodbye to a large number of graduates. Avery, Chase, Rachel, Saige, and Helen are on to great things!

May 2026 - Rachel and Nic win biology awards! Rachel won the Outstanding Biology Senior award, while Nic won the Vic and Eileen Cvancara Outstanding Teaching Award.

April 2026 - It’s CERCA week! The Wheeler Lab was well represented at UWEC’s annual celebration of research and creative activity. DeclanBailey, Chase, and Avery presented posters, while Sonja and Helen gave talks at the Provost’s Honors Symposium.

February 2026 - Congrats to Sonja Olson, who received the ASP Bernie Fried Research Award for her work tracking how egg deposition site shapes transcriptomes across the schistosome life cycle!

December 2025 - Congrats to Sophie for graduating with a degree in bioinformatics!

August 2025 - We’re excited to release an important bit of work, Tissue-Specific Distribution of Eggs in The Definitive Host Drives Transcriptomic and Behavioral Differences in Schistosoma Mansoni Miracidia, led by student co-authors Sophie and Sonja !

July 2025 - The lab traveled to the 100th annual conference to the American Society of Parasitology! Everyone had a great time presenting posters, giving talks, and gourging on seafood. Congrats to Chase, Avery, Helen, Saige, Sonja , and Sophie for their travel awards and successful poster presentations.

July 2025 - We are very excited and proud to release a major original research paper, Quantitative ethology of schistosome miracidia characterizes a conserved snail peptide that inhibits penetration. This is the culmination of over 3 years of work and a 7 year vision and goal of better understanding the idiosyncratic behaviors that schistosome miracidia exhibit while sensing their intermediate host snails. We built a lot of novel, cutting-edge tech and code to make this happen, and we’re excited to release it to the world! It was truly a lab-wide effort, with 8 Wheeler Lab students (past and present) contributing as authors. Congratulations to all!

Quantitative ethology of schistosome miracidia characterizes a conserved snail peptide that inhibits host recognition

Author summary Schistosomiasis is a parasitic disease that affects hundreds of millions of people, especially in regions with limited access to clean water. To complete its life cycle, the parasite must infect freshwater snails, a process that begins when its aquatic larvae – called miracidia – locate and recognize suitable snail hosts. In our study, we developed a new imaging and analysis system that allows us to observe and quantify how miracidia behave in response to chemical signals from snails. We found that miracidia change their swimming patterns only when these signals are presented as gradients, not when they are uniformly distributed. We focused on a specific snail-derived molecule, a peptide called P12, and discovered that different versions of this peptide from various snail species trigger distinct behavioral responses. When P12 is spread uniformly in water with a suitable snail host, it can block the parasite’s ability to recognize and infect snails. These findings offer new insight into how parasites locate their hosts and suggest a possible strategy for reducing disease transmission by interfering with host recognition without harming the snails themselves.

journals.plos.org

March 2025 - A big week for the Wheeler Lab! After authoring her first peer-reviewed publication, we’ve now learned that Rachel has received the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship. Rachel was one of 441 recipients (3 from UWEC!!!) out of a pool 1,350 science, engineering, and mathematics nominees. This is a huge achievement, and we’re so proud of Rachel! Read more about the award here.

March 2025 - The first official Wheeler Lab paper has been published! We designed a GUI for wrmXpress and developed new phenotypic pipelines. Congrats to the co-first authors Zach, Rachel, Carly, and the other co-authors! Check out the paper here and download the app here.

August 2024 - We are incredibly excited and grateful to receive funding from the NIH’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The >$300,000 R15 grant will support undergraduate research in the Wheeler Lab for the next 3 years!

June 2024 - ASP Round 2 for the Wheeler Lab 🥼 The lab traveled to Denver to present research on schistosomes, mosquitoes, and new software developed by undergraduate students. Chase’s dance moves will live in ASP infamy 🕺🏻

(The science was good too.)

May 2024 - We said goodbye to the first cohort of Wheeler Lab graduates 🎓😭🎉 Congrats to Megan , Maggie, Carly, Blake, and Zach (not shown). They’re off to do great things!

Also, checkout the very cool gifts they received. S/O to the UWEC Makerspace for letting me use the laser cutter!

May 2024 - Huge congratulations to Megan and Zach, who won the UWEC Biology Outstanding Senior Award!

May 2024 - Very excited to welcome new students to the lab through the Biology Research Scholars program. Chase, Helen, Avery, and Sophie took a spring seminar course to prepare for a summer full of parasite research.

April 2024 - The lab’s first Celebration of Research + Creative Activity at UWEC. Very fun for the lab to present three posters on 👃🏼Flatworm sensory behaviors, No access sensation, and 🪱wrmXpress!

October 2023 - Nic received recognition as a featured scholar at UWEC’s annual Celebration of Scholarship. Dr. Jenn Smith from the biology department was also featured.