In her presentation at the ECP Recognition Symposium at Entomology 2021, Amelia Lindsey, Ph.D., will share the progress she and colleagues have made on understanding how the bacterial symbiont Wolbachia can convert an insect’s offspring from male to female. “This phenomenon,” she says, “enables certain insects that are infected with these bacteria to reproduce asexually: females producing only female offspring without the need for a mate. … After nearly a decade of developing the tools and building our ‘model system,’ we finally have some exciting data on which genes Wolbachia uses to change the sex of an insect.” Drosophila fruit flies are among Lindsey’s study organisms; shown here are microscope views of Drosophila testes (left) and ovaries (right).