Stony Brook men’s lacrosse has unveiled its schedule for the 2025 season. The Seawolves open the regular season with road tests at Rutgers and North Carolina and will play six games at LaValle Stadium.
The Seawolves open season number six under head coach Anthony Gilardi on February 8 at Rutgers. The Seawolves and Scarlet Knights meet for the fourth straight season, with Stony Brook in search of their seventh overall win over Rutgers and its first since 2020.
Stony Brook returns to action the following weekend, hitting the road to face a pair of North Carolina based opponents. The Seawolves visit Chapel Hill to pair off with UNC on February 14 and then stay in state to face Queens College on February 16. The Seawolves and Tar Heels meet for the second straight season and Stony Brook searches for its first-ever win over UNC.
The Seawolves host Sacred Heart on February 22 in the 2025 home opener at LaValle Stadium. Stony Brook topped Sacred Heart on the road in last year’s season opener. Stony Brook welcomes Iona to LaValle in the first-ever meeting between the two programs on February 25.
Stony Brook concludes non-conference play against in-state foes Manhattan (March 1) and Binghamton (March 8), before opening CAA play in the 15th installment of the Battle of Long Island against Hofstra on March 15. The Seawolves face defending CAA Champion Towson on the road on March 22 before returning home for the conference opener on March 29 against Fairfield.
The Seawolves face Delaware (April 5) and Drexel (April 19) on the road and host Monmouth (April 12) and Hampton (April 26) to conclude the final month of the regular season. The 2025 CAA Tournament begins on May 1.
Stony Brook women’s basketball fell just short against Charleston, 66-53, on Friday evening at TD Arena. The Seawolves were led by Breauna Ware and Zaida Gonzalez who accounted for almost 70 percent of scoring.
Ware led the Seawolves with 21 points and six rebounds while Gonzalez added 16 points and Shamarla Kingchipped in as well with eight points and a team-high 10 rebounds.
Stony Brook collected 35 rebounds compared to Charleston’s 29, led by King’s 10 boards.
Stony Brook struggled out of the gate, falling behind 20-6 at the end of the first quarter. The Seawolves went five scoreless minutes before King drained a three-pointer and Ware notched a layup and one free throw.
The Seawolves fought back in the second period, narrowing the deficit to 31-20 by the time halftime rolled around. Ware scored seven points to get Stony Brook back within striking distance of the Cougars, outscoring the squad by three points.
Stony Brook came out of halftime on fire, going on a 6-0 run to trim its deficit to 31-26 with 6:13 to go in the third. Charleston then countered and stretched its lead to 46-38 heading into the fourth. King, Ware, Gonzalez, and Lauren Filien had their share in making a Seawolves’ run outscoring the Cougars once again.
Stony Brook could not pull any closer in the fourth, getting within six points of Charleston’s lead but the squad was unable to connect on scoring and making stops, losing by a final of 66-53.
The team heads to North Carolina to face off against UNC Wilmington on Feb. 2 at 2 p.m. This will be only the fifth meeting between the Seawolves and Seahawks in program history. Coverage is set to be available on FloCollege.
Despite a 27-point effort from CJ Luster II, Stony Brook fell to Charleston, 81-74, on Jan. 30 at TD Arena. The Seawolves raced out to a 15-point advantage but the Cougars’ hot-second half pushed them past Stony Brook in the nationally televised affair in South Carolina.
Stony Brook raced out to a 15-0 advantage, holding Charleston without a point over the opening 5:32. The Seawolves connected on 7-of-11 from the floor to start the evening, while the Cougars missed on nine straight to begin the night. Stony Brook led 21-6 with 9:30 remaining in the opening stanza before Charleston ripped off eight straight points and held the Seawolves without a made field goal for more than four minutes. Luster stretched Stony Brook’s lead to double-digits again, 28-18, after connecting on his third trifecta of the first half with less than six minutes on the clock.
Charleston finished the final five minutes of the first half strong, whittling its deficit down to four points, 36-32, at the break. The Cougars scored the first nine points of the second half, turning the four-point deficit into a five-point advantage, their first lead of the evening.
Luster ended a Seawolves’ drought to start the second half by scoring 10 points over a span of three-plus minutes to even the contest at 48-48 with 13 minutes to play. The game of runs continued, seeing Charleston score 17 of the next 24 points to construct a 10-point lead, 65-55, as the clock ticked under eight minutes to play. Stony Brook battled back, trimming its deficit to two points, 68-66, with five minutes remaining.
The Cougars used a late 11-0 run to open up a 79-66 advantage and ultimately close out the come-from-behind victory over the Seawolves.
“Our guys did a great job putting us in position to win the game on the free throw line down two with five minutes to go. Charleston was able to get an offensive rebound and score and they spurted away from us late,” head coach Geno Ford noted. “I was happy with the aggressiveness and tenacity we showed for much of the night. We are playing better as of late and have a tough one on Saturday at UNC Wilmington.”
Up next, the team continues its swing through the south, facing UNC Wilmington on February 1. Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m. from Trask Coliseum, with the contest streaming on FloCollege.
Stony Brook men’s basketball earned its first league victory with an 89-74 triumph over North Carolina A&T on Jan. 26 on Long Island. CJ Luster II (31) and Andre Snoddy (22) tallied career-high marks in points to cap off the seventh annual Children’s Hospital Game with a win.
The opening 15 minutes of action were a back-and-forth affair, with the lead trading hands five times. Neither team led by more than four points during that span.
Stony Brook used a 9-2 run that featured baskets from Collin O’Connor, Luster and Ben Wight to build a 37-29 advantage with three minutes remaining in the half.
The Seawolves constructed an 11-point lead, the largest of the afternoon. Stony Brook a 46-35 advantage into the intermission.
After a Snoddy basket to open the half made it a 13-point game, N.C. A&T fought back to whittle its deficit to four points, 55-51, with 13 minutes to play in regulation.
Luster ripped off six straight points to push the advantage back to double figures before the Aggies again trimmed their deficit to five points with 8:28 to play.
Stony Brook answered with eight straight points, holding N.C. A&T without a made field goal for more than four minutes to take complete control of the contest.
The Seawolves stretched their lead to 15 points, maintaining a double-digit cushion in the scoring column and capping off an emotional day with their first CAA victory of the season.
“First and foremost I want to thank the [Stony Brook] Children’s Hospital for organizing another great event. To be able to meet families who are going through a real courageous battle with their children keeps things in perspective. I know the players and our coaching staff wanted more than anything to try to provide a few hours of quality entertainment. We continue to pray for all the families,” head coach Geno Ford said postgame.
“I’m happy for the players; we needed to win, and to be able to do it as shorthanded as we were, makes it even better,” he added.
Up next, the team heads south to face Charleston in a rematch of the 2024 CAA Championship on Jan. 30. Tip-off is scheduled for 6 p.m. from TD Arena, with the contest streaming on FloCollege.
The Stony Brook women’s basketball team rallied from a fourth-quarter deficit to take down the Campbell Fighting Camels, 75-70, at home on Jan. 26.
The Seawolves (10-9, 5-3) had five players score in double figures, led by Zaida Gonzalez, who had 22 points and seven rebounds. Shamarla King tacked on 13 points and Breauna Ware chipped in as well with 12 points, eight rebounds and five assists.
Janay Brantley and Dallysshya Moreno each added 10 points for Stony Brook.
The Seawolves out rebounded the Camels 40-31 in Sunday’s game, paced by Lauren Filien with a team-high 10 boards, while tallying eight points, one block, and one assist.
After jumping out to an 11-10 advantage, Stony Brook went on a 9-0 run with 3:21 left in the first quarter, culminating in a bucket from Gonzalez, to increase its lead to 20-10, a score that would hold for the rest of the period. Stony Brook did most of its first quarter damage in the paint, scoring 14 of its 20 points close to the basket.
The Seawolves surrendered their lead in the second quarter and entered halftime with the score tied 33-33.
After intermission, Stony Brook jumped out to a 39-37 lead before going on a 9-0 run, punctuated by a three from Ware, to expand its lead further to 48-37 with 5:29 to go in the third. Campbell responded to seize a 56-55 lead entering the fourth quarter.
Stony Brook played well near the basket, scoring 16 of its 22 points in the paint.
Campbell kept widening its lead in the fourth, constructing a 69-65 advantage before Stony Brook went on an 8-0 run to seize a 73-69 lead with 19 seconds to go in the contest provided by back-to-back threes from Gonzalez. The Seawolves kept expanding the margin and coasted the rest of the way for the 75-70 win.
Up next, the team travels to South Carolina to face off against Charleston on Jan. 31 at 7 p.m. This will be the second meeting between the Seawolves and Cougars this season. Coverage is set to be available on FloCollege.
Hand-drawn renderings of two of the seven sampled molars from Australopithecus (StW-148 and StW-47), illustrative of teeth frequently exposed to plant eating. Credit: Dom Jack, MPIC
Study published in Science identifies Australopithecus as a plant eater, narrowing the scope on when regular animal consumption increased and brains grew.
An international team of researchers including Dominic Stratford, PhD, of Stony Brook University and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, have discovered that an ancient human ancestor found in deposits at the Sterkfontein Caves, Australopithecus, which lived more than three million years ago in South Africa, primarily ate plant-based foods. The finding, published in the journal Science, stems from an analysis of tooth enamel from seven Australopithecus fossils and is significant because the emergence of meat eating is thought to be a key driver of a large increase in brain size seen in later hominins.
Every human behavior, from abstract thought to the development of complex technology, is a result of the evolution of the brain. According to evolutionary scientists, meat consumption is a primary driver of many aspects of the evolution of our own genus, Homo, including brain size. When hominins started to exploit and consume highly nutritious animal products is a major question in human evolution studies because it represents a turning point in our evolution. However, direct evidence of when meat eating emerged among our earliest ancestors, and how its consumption developed through time, has remained elusive to scientists.
The research team included investigators from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) in Germany and the University of Witwatersrand. They analyzed stable nitrogen isotope data (15N/14N) from tooth enamel of Australopithecus fossils found in the caves, an area known for its rich collection of early hominin fossils.
The ratio of stable nitrogen isotopes accumulated in animals’ tissues has been used to understand its trophic position – place in the food chain – for many years. An enrichment of 15N is generally indicative of a higher position in the food chain and consumption of animal tissue. Conventionally, bone collagen or dentin are sampled to attain enough nitrogen isotopes for analysis. But these tissues typically decay relatively rapidly, limiting the application of nitrogen isotope analysis to about 300,000 years.
The recent development of more sensitive analytical techniques that can measure less nitrogen provided the opportunity to sample enamel, the hardest tissue of the mammalian body that also traps Nitrogen stable isotopes while it is forming. Enamel can potentially preserve the isotopic fingerprint of an animal’s diet for millions of years.
According to Stratford, an Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Stony Brook University, and Director of Research at the Sterkfontein Caves, and his colleagues, this advancement in nitrogen isotope analysis enabled the researchers to obtain the first direct evidence of the diet of ancient hominin fossils and explore when meat eating started, the behavior that set hominins on a new evolutionary path.
They compared the isotopic data from those fossils with tooth samples of other coexisting animals at the time, such as monkeys, antelopes, hyenas, jackals and big cats. The comparison revealed that while its possible Australopithecusoccasionally consumed meat, its primary diet was plant-based.
In fact, the isotopic data showed the hominin ate more like a herbivore than a carnivore. One interpretation of this result, explains Stratford, is that changes in behavior known to occur in Australopithecus may not be a result of an increase in meat consumption. It may also suggest that regular meat eating had not yet emerged as a behavior in a hominin this old, implying that it occurred only later in time, or in a different geographic area.
“Overall, this work provides clear evidence that Australopithecus in South Africa did not eat significant amounts of meat three million years ago, and it represents a huge step in extending our ability to better understand diets and trophic level of all animals back into the scale of millions of years,” adds Stratford.
The Stony Brook women’s basketball team got a 26-point performance from the bench on the way to a 62-46 win over the Northeastern Huskies at home on Jan. 24.
Chloe Oliver led the Seawolves (9-9, CAA 4-3) with 10 points, four rebounds, and two assists, while Zaida Gonzalez notched nine points, four assists, and two rebounds. Shamarla King and Janay Brantley both recorded eight points to help Stony Brook to their fourth conference victory of the season.
Stony Brook took advantage of fantastic ball movement in Friday’s game, piling up 18 assists on 25 made field goals. Individually, Breauna Ware was on top of the dish list for the Seawolves with five assists.
Stony Brook’s defense held Northeastern to only 35.8 percent shooting from the field, including 20 percent from beyond the arc. The Seawolves’ defense was disruptive causing 21 turnovers from the Huskies.
HOW IT HAPPENED
After playing to a 5-5 tie early in the game, Stony Brook went on a 9-0 run with 4:07 left in the first quarter, culminating in a three from Gonzalez, to take a 14-5 lead, a score that would hold for the rest of the period.
Stony Brook kept its first quarter lead intact before going on a 5-0 run starting at the 1:43 mark in the second period to increase its lead to 25-19, a score that would hold until halftime. Stony Brook forced seven Northeastern turnovers in the period.
Stony Brook continued to preserve its halftime lead before going on a 9-0 run to expand its lead further to 34-24 with 5:55 to go in the third. Before the third period was over, the Seawolves added six points to that lead and entered the fourth quarter with a 46-30 edge. Stony Brook played well near the basket, scoring 14 of its 21 points in the paint.
Stony Brook kept its lead intact before going on a 7-0 run, finished off by Dallysshya Moreno’s layup, to grow the lead to 53-32 with 8:31 to go in the contest. The Huskies narrowed the margin somewhat before the game was over, but the Seawolves still cruised the rest of the way for the 62-46 win. Stony Brook fired away from deep in the quarter, knocking down three shots to account for nine of its 16 points.
STATS AND NOTES
· Chloe Oliver led the Seawolves with a team-high 10 points, adding four rebounds and a pair of assists.
· Stony Brook put on a passing clinic, recording an assist on 72 percent of made field goals.
· The Seawolves had a stellar day defensively, holding Northeastern to 35.8 percent from the field and 20 percent from beyond the arc on 20 attempts.
· The Stony Brook bench came alive by scoring 28 points to its scoring output.
· The Seawolves forced 21 Northeastern turnovers while committing only 11 on the other end.
· Stony Brook is 8-7 all-time against Northeastern in a series dating back to 2002.
QUOTES FROM THE SEAWOLVES
Up next, the team stays on their home court to take on Campbell on Sunday, Jan. 26 at 1 p.m. for National Girls and Women in Sports Day. Coverage is set to be available on FloCollege.
Andrew Reid, 19, who transformed his family’s East Northport home into a holiday lighted winter wonderland with over 500 restored holiday decorations, along with his mother, Christine, presented a check for $16,023.20 in donations raised by visitors to their holiday light display to representatives from Ronald McDonald House Charities NY Metro on Jan. 15.
The size of the donation was kept a surprise by Andrew right up until the moment the check was presented.
“I was blown away, I had no idea it was going to be that large,” said Matt Campo, CEO of Ronald McDonald House Charities New York Metro. “I told the family we work so hard to raise every dollar. For someone to come and hand us more than $16,000 is just amazing.”
What began as a passion for refurbishing discarded holiday decorations grew into an annual tradition for Andrew and his family, with more than 500 decorations covering nearly every inch of Andrew’s home, yard, and even his car. His display was chronicled by media across New York and nationally. Andrew’s “Misfit Island” Christmas display was also voted the winner of Newsday’s “Holiday Lights” contest, with a prize of $1,000, which will be part of the donation to Ronald McDonald House Charities NY Metro.
“I surprised myself as well. It was a lot of work, a lot of standing in front of the house collecting donations,” said Andrew, who says he begins setting up his display in August every year. “Ronald McDonald House is a very good organization to support and it’s local, so the money will stay here.”
The money donated will go toward the construction of the new Ronald McDonald House at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital. A groundbreaking ceremony was held last year and construction will begin in the spring with plans to open in 2027.
Ronald McDonald House Charities New York Metro provides comfort and support to families of children undergoing medical treatment. Funds raised through Andrew’s light display will directly benefit the new 24/7 care facility at Stony Brook Hospital, ensuring families can stay close to their sick or injured children.
Stony Brook men’s basketball fell, 79-54, to Campbell on Jan. 23 at Stony Brook Arena. Ben Wight eclipsed 1,000 career points in the setback, finishing with 10 points and seven rebounds.
Stony Brook and Campbell traded baskets over the opening eight minutes of action before the Camels took full control of the contest.
The Seawolves trailed 13-11 before allowing 11 straight points and falling behind, 24-13 at the 8:59 mark of the first half.
Stony Brook trimmed the deficit to nine points, but were outscored 17-4 over the final seven-plus minutes of the half and trailed 41-19 heading into the locker room.
The Camels maintained a sizable advantage for the entirety of the second half, shooting 64 percent from the floor over the final 20 minutes of action.
Campbell led by as many as 27 points during the second half and the smallest margin between the two sides during the second stanza was 17 points.
“Give Campbell credit, they were good early. We have had a hard time versus pressure all year and Collin picked up two quick fouls. We had 10 turnovers in our first 26 possessions; we cannot overcome those numbers,” head coach Geno Ford said. “We have a big Children’s Hospital game Saturday and we desperately need to play better.”
The team stays on the Island, hosting North Carolina A&T for the seventh annual Stony Brook Children’s Hospital Game on Jan. 25. Tip-off is scheduled for noon from Stony Brook Arena, with the contest airing live on SNY and streaming on FloCollege.
From left, postdoctoral researcher William Thomas, Professor Liliana Dávalos and former undergraduate fellow Maria Alejandra Bedoya Duque. Photo courtesy of William Thomas
By Daniel Dunaief
Captivity causes changes in a brain, at least in the shrew.
Small animals that look like rodents but are related to moles and hedgehogs, shrews have different gene expression in several important areas of their brain during captivity.
In a study led by 2022 Hearst summer Undergraduate Research Fellow Maria Alejandra Bedoya Duque in the lab of Stony Brook Professor Liliana Dávalos, shrews in captivity haddifferent gene expression in the cortex, hippocampus and olfactory bulb. These brain areas are important for cognition, memory and environmental sensing.
“I was very surprised by what we found,” said Dávalos. While she expected that the research might uncover differences between the brains of captive and wild animals, she didn’t expect the changes to be as many or as strong.
The change in brain activity could offer potential alternative explanations for studies that explore the effect of various experiments on animals kept in captivity.
“It could be very useful to find out if these environmental influences could be confounding,” said Dávalos. “We don’t know all the dimensions of what captivity is doing.”
Additionally, brain activity changes in captivity for shrews in terms of the transcripts that are over or under expressed mirror those found in humans who have neurological changes such as major depressive disorder or neuro degenerative disorders.
“How these [changes] influence behavior or cognition is a separate question,” Dávalos added.
To be sure, extrapolating from shrews to humans is different and requires careful analysis, Dávalos explained.
Humans and shrews have distinct life history, ecology, body size and other characteristics. While scientists can study genes they think might have similar functions, more studies are necessary to determine the effects of those genes in expression and how similar they are to those studied in humans or mice.
Dávalos does not expect to find a silver bullet that reorganizes human brains or a gene or pathway that’s going to revolutionize neurodegenerative research.
Nonetheless, in and of itself, the study suggested opportunities for further research and exploration into the effects of captivity on animals in general and, in particular, on their mental processes, which are affected by changes in conditions and needs in their environment.
A foundation for future work
Maria Alejandra Bedoya Duque
The study, which was recently published in the journal Biology Letters, grew out of a two-month internship Bedoya did at Stony Brook in which she studied the brains of four captive shrews and four wild animals. The analysis of the results involved numerous calls and discussions when she returned to Colombia to finish her undergraduate degree.
At the end of the summer, Bedoya was “going to present her work internally at Stony Brook,” explained William Thomas, a postdoctoral researcher in Dávalos’s lab and one of Bedoya’s mentors throughout the project. “Instead, she turned it into a paper.”
Thomas appreciated how Bedoya “put in a lot of work to make sure she got this out,” he said.
The shrew’s brain changed after two months in captivity, which is about 20 percent of their total lifespan, as shrews live an average of one year.
“We don’t know what the limits are,” in terms of the effect of timing on triggering changes in the shrew’s brain, Thomas said. “We don’t know how early the captive effect is.”
Thomas suggested that this paper could “lay the foundation for future studies with larger samples.”
Dávalos was pleased that the study resulted in a meaningful paper after a summer of gathering data and several years of analyzing and presenting the information.
“I’m immensely proud and happy that we had this unexpected finding,” said Dávalos. “It is one of the most gratifying experiences as a mentor.”
A launching pad
Bedoya, who graduated from Universidad Icesi in 2023 and is applying to graduate school after working as an adjunct professor/ lecturer at her alma mater, is pleased her work led to a published paper.
“I was so happy,” said Bedoya. “If it hadn’t been for [Thomas] and [Dávalos] cheering me on the whole time when I came back to Colombia, this study could have ended as my fellowship ended.”
Bedoya believes the experience at Stony Brook provided a launching pad for her career.
“It is a very valuable experience to have conducted this research all the way up to publication,” she said.
Thomas and Dávalos each recalled their own first scientific publication.
“I’m happy and relieved when they come out,” said Thomas. “While internal validation is important, the pleasure comes from providing something that you believe can help society.”
Dávalos’s first publication involved some unusual twists and turns. When she submitted her first paper about deforestation in the Andes, the journal wrote back to her in a letter telling her the paper was too newsy. She submitted it to several other publications, including one that indicated they had a huge backlog and weren’t publishing new research.
When it was published, the paper didn’t receive much attention. That paper, and another on her thoughts about how peace between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels might be worse for the rainforest, have since been cited frequently by other researchers.
Winter brain
At around the same time that Bedoya published her work about the effect of captivity on the shrew brain, Thomas published a study in the journal eLife in which he examined how shrew brains shrank during the winter and then regrew during the spring.
This work could offer genetic clues to neurological and metabolic health in mammals. Thomas focused on the hypothalamus, measuring how gene expression shifts seasonally.
A suite of genes that change across the seasons were involved in the regulation of energy homeostasis as well as genes that regulate cell death that might be associated with reductions in brain size.
Temperature was the driver of these seasonal changes.
The genes involved in maintaining the blood brain barrier and calcium signaling were upregulated in the shrew compared with other mammals.
After the winter, the shrew’s brains recovered their size, although below their pre-winter size.
Originally from Syracuse, Thomas attended SUNY Albany.
When he was younger, he entertained ideas of becoming a doctor, particularly as his grandmother battled ALS. On his first day shadowing a physician, he felt claustrophobic in the exam room and almost passed out.
He wanted to be outside instead of in “the squeaky clean floors” of a doctor’s office, he explained in an email.
As a scientist, he feels he can meld his passion for nature and his desire to help those who suffer from disease.
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