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Pláticas methodology is introduced in this article to advance the centering of Latinx researchers and Latinx students in STEM research. As an increase in Latinx educational researchers enter academia, engaging an appropriate epistemology and methodology that is culturally relevant and race-centered is key in the ongoing STEM education research which aims to diversify and create equitable outcomes for Students of Color. This article draws from a study with 24 Latinx STEM students and 48 pláticas. An overview of pláticas methodology, Chicana/Latina Feminist Epistemology, along with an examination of the principles of pláticas methodology in STEM education. This article is timely as the Latinx student population and Hispanic-Serving Institutions are growing in higher education. This article places emphasizes reframing methodology to provide a culturally relevant and holistic methodology to engage Latinx Students and advance STEM education research focusing on Latinx students. 

Despite extensive work on both insect disease and plant reproduction, there is little research on the intersection of the two. Insect-infecting pathogens could disrupt the pollination process by affecting pollinator population density or traits. Pathogens may also infect insect herbivores and change herbivory, potentially altering resource allocation to plant reproduction. We conducted a meta-analysis to (1) summarize the literature on the effects of pathogens on insect pollinators and herbivores and (2) quantify the extent to which pathogens affect insect traits, with potential repercussions for plant reproduction. We found 39 articles that fit our criteria for inclusion, extracting 218 measures of insect traits for 21 different insect species exposed to 25 different pathogens. We detected a negative effect of pathogen exposure on insect traits, which varied by host function: pathogens had a significant negative effect on insects that were herbivores or carried multiple functions but not on insects that solely functioned as pollinators. Particular pathogen types were heavily studied in certain insect orders, with 7 of 11 viral pathogen studies conducted in Lepidoptera and 5 of 9 fungal pathogen studies conducted in Hymenoptera. Our results suggest that most studies have focused on a small set of host–pathogen pairs. To understand the implications for plant reproduction, future work is needed to directly measure the effects of pathogens on pollinator effectiveness. 

Adaptive task allocation is used in many human-machine systems and has been proven to improve operators’ performance with automated systems. However, there has been limited knowledge surrounding the benefits of adaptive task allocation in automated vehicles. In this study, participants were presented with photos and videos depicting driving scenarios of low or high workloads at two levels of automation (SAE Levels 2 and 3). The participants reported which tasks they felt comfortable allocating to themselves or to the driving automation system (DAS) in each driving scenario, as well as whether they would conduct the task allocation manually or have the DAS automatically allocate the tasks. Our results showed that participants preferred conducting manual task allocation and preferred the system to complete more tasks when the perceived workload was high. There was no significant difference between the high and low workload scenarios in terms of whether participants chose to allocate tasks.