Principal Investigator

Mingzi Xu (Scholar)

Mingzi is an evolutionary biologist broadly interested in the evolution of animal behavior. She is particularly interested in the evolution, genetics, and genomics of sexual communication systems as well as environmental and human impact on mate choice and sexual selection in natural populations. She integrates field-based behavioral and lab-based genomic approaches in answering fundamental questions about the evolution of acoustic communication using crickets as a model system.

Mingzi received her B.Sc. from Fudan University in Shanghai, China. To pursue a career in animal behavior, she moved to the US to attend graduate school. She obtained her Ph.D. from the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Program in the Department of Biology, University of Oklahoma with Dr. Ola Fincke, where she did her dissertation research on sexual signaling in odonates. During her Ph.D., she has also been a Pre-doctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, where she conducted research on sexual signaling of the Neotropical giant damselfly on Barro Colorado Island, Panama for two years. Upon finishing her Ph.D., she joined Dr. Kerry Shaw's lab as a postdoc in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University, where she studied the genetic basis underlying signal-preference coevolution in the Laupala crickets of Hawaii.

Mingzi joined the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at University of Minnesota as a President's Postdoctoral Fellow in 2019 and has been promoted to assistant professor in the same department in 2022.

In her free time, Mingzi enjoys making dances about animal behaviors, playing the piano, hiking in the national parks, cooking, and trying to out-smart her way-too-smart cat Mocha Chuan'en Xu.

Postdoctoral researchers

Lata Kalra (Scholar)

Lata is a postdoctoral associate in the Xu lab. She did an integrated BS-MS degree in India with a dissertation focusing on the bioacoustic correlates of intermale competition in field crickets. Her PhD research at the University of Minnesota focused on auditory perception in socially complex environments in frogs. For her postdoctoral work, she is interested in identifying the neurogenomic mechanisms underlying the impacts of environmental perturbations, specifically those in temperatures, on sexual signaling and mate choice in field crickets.

Drew Anderson giving a talk behind a podium

Drew Anderson (Scholar)

Drew is a postdoctoral associate in the Xu lab. He did a BS in Marine Science/Biology from the University of Miami, taught high school Marine Science in Miami, then earned a MS in Marine Biology from the College of Charleston working on the genetic health of stock enhanced striped bass in the Carolinas. His PhD research at Texas A&M University focused on mate choice and the genetics of ornamentation in Gulf pipefish. Following that, he was a Visiting Professor/NSF Post-doctoral Research Fellow/Visiting Scholar PI at Reed College where he worked with biparental Tanganyikan cichlids, Julidochromis, to answer questions of how sexes shift behavioral phenotypes; he also developed a framework to make predictions on the genetics and hormonal changes that could occur during cross-sexual transfer. Drew joined the Xu lab to expand beyond his fish background and to investigate how mating experience, hormone levels, and genetics shape variation in female choice within and across individuals in field crickets. Drew has a website for more information on his work.

Graduate students

Swastik in the a marsh at night holding a directional microphone towards the water

Swastik Padhy (Scholar)

Swastik is from New Delhi, India. He is a third-year Ph.D. student at the Xu Lab. Swastik earned his Bachelor’s degree in Zoology and Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences from the University of Delhi, India. During his undergraduate studies, he developed a strong interest in animal communication systems. For his master’s thesis, he conducted a bibliographic review of literature correlating molecular phylogenetics and bioacoustics of Katydids. After graduation, he worked as a researcher at the Wildlife Institute of India and studied herpetofaunal diversity in the Central Indian landscape. For his Ph.D. using field crickets as the study system, he is studying how anthropogenic contaminants, particularly pesticides, affect male mating signals, female mate choice, and the subsequent implications on sexual selection and reproductive isolation between species.

Xiran Du

Xiran is a PhD student in the EEB program, starting in Fall 2025. She received her bachelor’s degree from the School of Life Sciences at Peking University. During her undergraduate, she worked in a neurobiology lab, where she studied how olfactory and auditory stimuli affect escape and mating behaviors in fruit flies.Her current research interests focus on how crickets respond to urbanization, particularly human-induced changes in temperature and light, with an emphasis on mating behavior.

Luke Drummer

Luke is a first-year P.h.D student at the U of M. He's from Mankato, MN, and got his bachelor's right here in the EEB program. His honor's thesis work was on auditory masking in tree-frogs- specifically on how informational masking constrains frog mating systems. After graduating he worked for the conservation corps for a year planting trees in small towns in Minnesota. Now, as a grad student, he is interested in questions related to the formation and maintenance of reproductive barriers in mating systems.