Dr. Chloé Lahondère

FACULTY AFFILIATE   |   Global Change Center

Biochemistry

Lab Website  •  Google Scholar  •  Dept Page

(540) 231-9487  •  lahonder@vt.edu

Dr. Lahondère is a biologist interested in blood-sucking insects' thermal biology, physiology and neuro-ethology. She obtained her B.S. in Integrative & Evolutionnary Biology (2007), M.S. in Insect Science (2009) and Ph.D. in Life Sciences & Entomology (2012) from the University François Rabelais of Tours, France. She then moved to Seattle, WA, to conduct her post-doc in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington, before joining Virginia Tech in 2017.

The Lahondère lab at Virginia Tech works on disease vector insects (mosquitoes, tsetse flies, kissing bugs) and, in particular, the study of their physiology, behavior and ecology. In relation to global change, the Lahondère lab focuses on two main projects:

1) The effects of the environmental temperature on mosquito-host-pathogens interaction

2) The mosquito-plant interactions, with a focus on invasive species, including Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus, both able to spread several diseases including Zika.

The lab relies on an integrative and multidisciplinary approach to examine these questions bridging field work, molecular biology, physiology and neuroethology, to understand the effect of climate change at the scale of insects that are of medical and epidemiological importance.