EBIO Newsfeed

 

Phi Beta Kappa award goes to EBIO student - 5/3/12

Rachel Wildrick, a BA/MA student in the Safran lab, has been awarded a prestigious Crisp Fellowship which will pay her tuition during the 2012-2013 academic year at CU, enabling her to complete her excellent MA work. Competition for this fellowship from the Phi Beta Kappa Honor's Society was incredibly fierce this year. Safran describes Rachel as "one of our star EBIO undergrads, earning summa cum laude for her honor's thesis in her junior year among other fantastic acknowledgements of her intellect and talents. She has set very high goals for her MA work and I am confident she will achieve them." Congratulations to Rachel!

 

New from the Cruz Lab - 4/24/12

Noise pollution alters ecological services: enhanced pollination and disrupted seed dispersal, was just published in Proceedings of Royal Society B.   Clint Francis, PhD 2010 EBIO, was the lead author, and one of our current graduate students, Nathan Kleist, was a co-author.   Other authors include Catherine Ortega and Alex Cruz.  The paper has already generated a lot of publicity including NSF Press Release, BBC Radio, BBC News, MSNBC, Discovery News, Science News, Science Daily, and many more.  The work will also be featured in NPR and in an upcoming issue of Times Magazine.

 

EBIO master's thesis research gets national attention - 4/4/12

EBIO student Amanda Williams' masters thesis research was just published in Animal Behaviour, and has already picked up some attention:  it was selected as an editor's choice for an "In Focus Featured Article" and was also picked up by New Scientist.

 

EBIO students come out on top in NSF graduate research fellowship competition - 4/2/12

EBIO student Amanda Hund from the Safran lab has been offered a NSF graduate research fellowship. Other EBIO students, including Nathan Kleist from the Cruz and Guralnick labs, Ryan Lynch from the Schmidt lab, Kika Tarsi from the Davies lab, and Rachel Wildrick from the Safran lab, also earned recognition in the competition with Honorable Mention statuses.

 

Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grants gifted to 16 EBIO grad students - 4/2/12

The EBIO Graduate School has given 16 current students grants ranging from $1000 to $2000. Congratulations to Anna Peterson, Amber Churchill, John Mischler, Brian Stucky, Gaddy Bergmann, Scott Ferrenberg, Amanda Hund, Max Joseph, Samantha Weintraub, Abbey Paulson, Matt Wilkins, Chelsea Cook, Sarah Orlofske, Miranda Redmond, Natalie Robinson, and Susan Whitehead.

 

EBIO graduate student awarded Campus Sustainability Award for Student Leadership - 4/2/12

EBIO grad student Samantha Weintraub just received the Campus Sustainability Award for Student Leadership. She has put in a lot of time into sustainability efforts and EBIO and Ramaley Hall, not to mention the environment, have already benefited from her work. There will be a luncheon awards ceremony in her honor on April 26. Congrats to Samantha!

 

EBIO's Mitton and Scott find mountain pine beetles are doubling their reproductive cycle - 3/20/12

Jeffry Mitton, an EBIO professor at CU, and one of his Ph.D. candidates, Scott Ferrenberg, have found that mountain pine beetles have developed the ability to reproduce twice instead of once a year. Mitton and Ferrenberg are the first to report this, attributing the reproductive change to climate warming, and their detailed findings will be in the May 2012 issue of The American Naturalist. The American Society of Naturalists has already given the work some extra buzz. Their article on the topic can be found here. The Boulder Daily Camera also wrote an article on the pair as well.

UPDATE: Colorado Public Radio also gave some attention to this research. Listen here!

 

EBIO's Breed and Nufio appointed to prominent positions in the Organization for Tropical Studies - 3/13/12

The Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) is a consortium of 63 universities and research institutions in the United States, Latin America and Australia. Two of EBIO's own, Mike Breed and César Nufio, were recently elected to prominent positions in the organization. Breed will be OTS's new Chairman of the Board and Nufio will be the new Chair of the Education Committee. Congratulations to both!

 

Media recognition for EBIO's Andrew Martin and his classroom "flipping" - 2/19/12

Andrew Martin's Evolutionary Biology class at CU Boulder is getting media recognition because of his modern teaching style of "flipping". With flipping, instead of a traditional passive-listening lecture, students are broken into discussion groups during class. Before class students may watch lectures online, listen to podcasts, or do readings to get a basic understanding of the material. Then, during class time, students do more of what traditional teachers would deem homework, working through problems and helping peers gain understanding through discussions. Read more about Martin's classroom from the article about him in The Chronicle.

 

Boulder Daily Camera recognizes Johnson and Safran - 2/17/12

The Boulder Daily Camera, Boulder's daily newspaper, featured EBIO professors Pieter Johnson and Rebecca Safran for their recent NSF CAREER awards. More on the awards can be found on this page in the news updates on 11/30/11 and 11/29/11. Check out what our wonderful faculty are doing in this coverage from the popular press: Two CU-Boulder scientists win National Science Foundation awards.

 

Medeiros lab secures double grants, NSF EAGER and NIH R03 - 2/7/12

The National Science Foundation gave the Medeiros lab the EAGER (EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research) award to turn the invertebrate chordate Amphioxus into a genetic model system. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) R03 helps support small projects that have the potential to be turned into 5 year NIH R01 proposals - in this case the grant will support the identification of direct transcription regulators of neural border formation in vertebrates. The grants, which will start April 2012, will bring in nearly 400,000 dollars to CU over the next two years. EBIO student Tyler Square and EBIO postdoc Dr. Aaron Garnett helped with preliminary data gathering for the grants.

 

Michael Breed earns "Outstanding Academic Title" recognition from Choice Magazine - 12/20/11

In each January issue, Choice Magazine publishes a list of the Outstanding Academic Titles of 2011, a list EBIO Professor Michael Breed found himself on for his work editing the Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior. Breed worked alongside Janice Moore to edit the work, which has over 300 entries and covers concepts from animal learning and navigation to animal welfare.

 

Pieter Johnson scores another NSF CAREER award for EBIO - 11/30/11

CU EBIO Assistant Professor Pieter Johnson was just announced as another NSF CAREER award recipient. Johnson's award marks the second NSF CAREER award for EBIO faculty this year. The $700,000 award spans for five years and will be applied to understanding how community diversity affects disease. Johnson currently researches disease emergence and species invasions at CU-Boulder.

 

Rebecca Safran to receive an NSF CAREER award - 11/29/11

EBIO Assistant Professor Rebecca Safran has just received one of the National Science Foundation's top awards from the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. The CAREER award is given to junior faculty members who have strengths as both teachers and scholars. Safran will use the $850,000 award to collect data on the genomic signatures of speciation. The 5-year award will fund research expeditions throughout the northern hemisphere to collect data on a young but rapidly diverging group of populations in order to study the process of biodiversity evolution from genetic, morphological and ecological perspectives.  An exciting range of teaching innovations related to this work will be completed via film-making, extensive international collaboration and local citizen science projects.

 

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for Miranda Redmond - 11/28/11

Miranda Redmond, currently a Ph.D. candidate working under faculty advisor Nichole Barger, has just been awarded a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP). GRFP recipients receive three years of support from the National Science Foundation including an annual stipend of $30,000 and a cost-of-education allowance to the university of study. The title of her research is "The Vulnerability of Pinyon Pine to Changing Climate along the Colorado Plateau".

 

Cruz lab's new paper receives immediate buzz - 11/10/11

In a paper published on November 9, 2011, in PLoS ONE, EBIO co-authors Clinton Francis, Catherine Ortega, and Alexander Cruz showed that in areas of high noise pollution it is actually the larger birds who are driven away. The researchers suggest this is because the lower pitch of their songs is more readily drowned out, leading members of the same species to have a difficult time communicating. Major science news organizations have already taken notice and have featured the article in blogs and news blurbs - find them at Science and Discovery News. The original article can be found here.

 

Opportunity for underrepresented graduate students - deadline September 19

The Colorado Advantage Graduate Preview Weekend (October 13-15, 2011) provides an opportunity for underrepresented students to preview the doctoral programs of EBIO and other CU Boulder Science, Technology, Engineering and Math departments. Application details may be found here.

 

Teaching innovations in EBIO enhanced by science teaching fellows - 9/5/11

Welcome to Dr. Anne-Marie Hoskinson and Dr. Sarah Wise who join us as science teaching fellows. Anne-Marie and Sarah will be collaborating with small working groups of faculty to build on our teaching innovations, including enhanced learning goals and more active learning environments. They are funded by a Science Education Initiative grant of $480,000 awarded to EBIO based on a strong proposal written by Andy Martin, Barbara Demmig-Adams, William Adams, Nichole Barger, John Basey and Sam Flaxman.

 

EBIO research team finds Southern Rockies pikas holding their own - 9/2/11

Pikas are sensitive to changes in temperature and snowpack, which have driven them to higher elevations and even local extinction in some areas of the western US. But doctoral candidate Liesl Erb, with Rob Guralnick, Chris Ray, and EBIO undergraduate research assistants Gavin Dean, Justine Smith, and Lizzy Studer, have found that pikas are doing better in the Southern Rocky Mountain region than elsewhere. See the full story here and featured in the Daily Camera.

 

Great news from the Seastedt lab: NSF grant to study environmental change - 9/1/11

Tim Seastedt got the good news of a new, large NSF grant. "Ecosystem transformations along the Colorado Front Range: Prairie dog interactions with multiple components of global environmental change", $851,704.00 (3 years), Tim Seastedt PI, Jesse Nippert (KSU) and Laurel Hartley (CU-Denver) Co-PIs.

In a nutshell: This study will measure how the new plant species are exploiting climate and resource changes, measure how grazing activities by prairie dogs are influenced by these new species, and assess the effects of these interactions on plant communities and soils. This research is important because it evaluates the contention that directional changes in climate and concurrent changes in plant species can alter the role of an animal from one that contributes to community resilience and diversity (i.e., a keystone species) to one that can alter community structure in previously undocumented ways (i.e., an ecosystem transformer).

Congratulations Tim!

 

High Honor for Barbara Demmig-Adams - 8/24/11

Barbara Demmig-Adams has been elected to membership in Leopoldina, the National Academy of Sciences for Germany/Austria/Switzerland. This is the highest academic honor awarded by an institution in Germany and more than 157 Nobel Laureates are fellows of Leopoldina. Past fellows include Darwin, Goethe and Ernest Rutherford.

Many congrats to Barbara!

 

Great news from the Stock lab! NSF grant to study irreversible evolution - 7/12/2011

David Stock has just received a 3 yr, $500,000 NSF grant for his project entitled "Causes and Consequences of Dentition Reduction in the Zebrafish Lineage."

Abstract. The direction of evolution is determined not only by the environments to which organisms are exposed, but also by features of their genetic and developmental programs that constrain the ability to vary. A pattern indicative of such “developmental constraint” is irreversible evolution, or the failure of lost structures to reappear when organisms return to ancestral environments or behaviors. An example of irreversible evolution is the reduction of tooth-bearing locations in cypriniform fishes. Teeth in this group, which includes minnows and suckers, were lost from the mouth and upper throat over 50 million years ago and are retained only on the lower surface of the throat. The lost teeth have never returned, despite the adoption of ancestral feeding modes by multiple lineages of this diverse group. The project will identify genetic changes that occurred in association with loss of teeth in cypriniforms and test the hypothesis that irreversible evolution is the result of accumulated changes in multiple genes and developmental pathways. In addition, genetic engineering approaches will be applied to a common laboratory cypriniform, the Zebra Danio, in an attempt to restore lost teeth. The enhanced understanding of developmental constraint is relevant to the practical question of whether species will be able to adapt to manmade environmental change or will instead become extinct. In addition to providing research training at the undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate levels, the project will produce modified fish strains that will enhance courses in Fish Biology and Genetics at the University of Colorado, as well as an exhibit at its Museum of Natural History.

Congrats to David and his lab!

 

"Pika Patrol" Citizen-Science Project Receives Support - 6/20/2011

Chris Ray has received a $5500 grant from the Office of University Outreach to support a citizen-science program focused on the American pika. The Front Range Pika Project is a collaborative effort led by Chris and her EBIO graduate students (Liesl Erb and Jennifer Wilkening), and supported by the Denver Zoo, Center for Native Ecosystems, CSU's Natural Resources Ecology Lab, and Colorado Division of Wildlife.  Trained citizens on the "Pika Patrol" will document details of the pika's distribution around the State, to evaluate hypothesized effects of climate change during this long-term study. Interns wanted, starting this Fall!

 

CU-Boulder receives $5.9M grant to continue research at Niwot Ridge 6/16/2011

Read more about the grant at the daily camera: http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_18285749?IADID=Search-www.dailycamera.com-www.dailycamera.com

 

Weevils Zap Wicked Weed of the West! - 4/26/2011

Tim Seastedt's research on biological control of spotted knapweed, dubbed the “wicked weed of the West,” a “national menace,” and a  “weed of mass destruction” is featured here in the current edition of College of Arts and Sciences Magazine.

 

EBIO undergraduate awarded prestigious Knowles Science Teaching Fellowship - 4/20/2011

Good news about one of our EBIO undergraduate students - Cacia Steensen. Cacia was the recipient of the Knowles Science Teaching Fellowship valued at nearly $150,000 over five years. Cacia will also be graduating with highest honors (Summa cum Laude) this semester. Read more about Cacia in CU Arts and Sciences Magazine.

Congratulations Cacia!!

 

Two grants to Rob Guralnick: Earth's biodiversity and response to climate change - 4/7/2011

Rob Guralnick has news from NASA and NSF.

Rob is Co-Investigator on "Integrating global species distributions, remote sensing information and climate station data to assess recent biodiversity response to climate change" Awarded from the NASA Climate and Biological Response: Research and Applications program, $1.67mil total budget, ~188K to CU Boulder.

Rob is PI on "ABI Development: Collaborative Research: VertNet, a New Model for Biodiversity Networks." Awarded from NSF Advances in Biological Informatics program, ~$2.4 mil. Total budget, $310K to CU Boulder.

Congratulations Rob!!!

 

Fulbright grant to Joey Knelman - 4/6/2011

Joey Knelman, who is finishing his MA with Diana Nemergut and has been admitted to our PhD program, has been awarded a Fulbright-Hays grant to spend a year in Tromsø, Norway conducting research in rhizosphere ecology - the ecology of interactions between plants and soil microbes around plant root systems. The research aims to increase crop yields and the sustainability of agriculture by enhancing nutrient delivery to plants through the microbial organisms, while reducing the need for fertilizer and chemical use.

Congratulations and an akvavit toast to Joey!!

 

Mike Breed featured in Arts & Science Magazine - 4/4/2011

Mike Breed's Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior is featured here in the current Arts and Sciences Magazine and was just reviewed in Choice, a very important tool used by librarians in evaluating books for adoption.

 

EBIO undergrad Ian Buller wins prestigious Goldwater Scholarship - 4/1/2011

Ian Buller is one of 275 Goldwater awardees selected on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,095 mathematics, science, and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide. Ian is a junior majoring in EBIO and plans to specialize in disease ecology to identify unknown diseases in remote areas, study their emergence, and design control programs. He aspires to discover previously unknown diseases. Ian has worked in Pieter Johnson's lab since the spring of 2009 on the Amphibian Necropsy Task Force, where he is currently team leader. He has a forthcoming publication as co-author in the scientific journal Ecology. Ian is also a first year class advisor and participant in the President's Leadership Class, one of CU's premier leadership development programs.

The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering. The Goldwater Scholarship is the premier undergraduate award of its type in these fields.

Congratulations Ian!

 

CU graduate hosts Science Channel show - 3/29/2011

Linda Rayor, a University of Colorado EBIO graduate and now a faculty member in entomology at Cornell University, is hosting "Monster Bug Wars" on the Science Channel. The show premieres tonight. Check out the preview video clips here.

Check it out!

 

Two EBIO faculty win Excellence Awards - 3/29/2011

The Boulder Faculty Assembly will honor Steve Schmidt and Barbara Demmig-Adams tomorrow afternoon at its annual awards ceremony. Steve Schmidt will receive the BFA Excellence in Research Award, and Barbara Demmig-Adams will receive the BFA Excellence in Teaching Award.

Congratulations to you both!

 

EBIO major Rachel Wildrick wins Van Ek award - 3/14/2011

Rachel Wildrick is a junior in EBIO, enrolled in our BA-MA program, and about to defend her honor's thesis. Wow! The Van Ek award is the highest award given to undergraduates in the College of Arts and Sciences and is awarded for outstanding academic achievement and contributions to the university community.

Rebecca Safran is Rachel's mentor and sponsor for the Award. Both Rachel and Becca will be honored in a ceremony this spring.

Congratulations!

 

Nine EBIO graduate students win Bev Sears grants - 3/11/2011

We have just learned that Nathan Kleist, Amy Trowbridge, Brittany Jenkins, Rob Baker, Sarah Orlofske, Sierra Love Stowell, Tim Farkas, Dan Preston, and Susan Whitehead have received Beverly Sears grants in amounts ranging from $750-$2000.

Congratulations to all!

 

Demmig-Adams, Adams and Lewis are EAGER at NSF - 3/11/2011

Barbara Demmig-Adams, William Adams, Ralph Jimenez, & Bill Lewis have received an EAGER grant from the National Science Foundation! Assessing Functional Diversity of Algal Communities at the Single Cell Level with a Compact Multi-function Microfluidic Cytometer (2011-2012) $205,000.

Congratulations!

 

Dr. Patrik Nosil a Packard nominee! - 3/2/2011

Patrik Nosil has been chosen as one of two candidates who will be put forward as the University's nominees for the Packard Award. This is a tremendous honor Patrik was selected from among 17 of the campuses most accomplished junior faculty.

Congrats to Patrik!

 

What the heck is a Bdelloid rotifer? - 2/16/2011

Mike Robison, graduate student in the Schmidt lab, is now one of the world's experts on one of the most ubiquitous groups of soil and aquatic eukaryotes! Their paper, entitled "Soil rotifer communities are extremely diverse globally but spatially autocorrelated locally" has just appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. To see the abstract, go to:

www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/02/16/1012678108.abstract has just appeared in PNAS.

 

Alan Townsend - Google climate change communicator - 2/15/2011

Congratulations to Alan Townsend, who has been chosen as one of only 21 Google Science Communication Fellows. He was chosen from among an elite group nominated by leaders in climate change research to communicate the science of climate change to the public. This is a tremendous honor and opportunity for him, as well as a large feather in CU's cap, and a statement of our high standing nationally in the science of climate change.

Alan is a faculty member in EBIO and ENVS (where he is Chair) and a member of INSTAAR.

blog.google.org/2011/02/making-sense-of-science-introducing.html

 

Mike Breed wins Prose Award - 2/10/2011

Mike Breed's "Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior" has just won a 2010 Prose Award from the Association of American Publishers.  This is a highly esteemed award that recognizes the very best in professional and scholarly publishing.  Mike's book (co-authored with Janice Moore) was among 45 scholarly publications selected for the award from a record breaking 491 entries.

Congratulations Mike!

 

Darwin Week! - 2/7/11-2/11/11

Darwin Week at the University of Colorado, Boulder, sponsored by the Secular Students and Skeptics Society there, running February 7-11. Featured are Vic Stenger on "Cosmic Creationism," a screening of the film Creation followed by commentary from Carol Cleland, Johannes Rudolph on "The Irreducible Complexity of DNA Building Blocks," John Stocke on "Science and Spirituality," Matt Young on "Evolution Confers Morality," Mike Klymkowsky on "Why Understanding Evolution is Hard and Hard to Accept," Sarah Wise on "Reading Darwin's Doodles," and Douglas Duncan on "Why Do People Misunderstand Science? Maybe It's the Way We Teach Them!"

 

EBIO wins science education grant - 1/19/2011

Andy Martin (PI) and CoPIs William Adams, Nichole Barger, John Basey, Barbara-Demmig-Adams, and Sam Flaxman have just learned that their proposal to CU's Science Education Initiative has been funded. They have garnered $480,000 to support "Increasing Teaching Effectiveness in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology".  This funding will have profound and lasting benefits for the entire department.

Congratulations and Thanks to all of you!!

 

Ned Friedman elected Fellow of AAAS - 12/28/2010

Ned Friedman has just received word that has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  This honor from AAAS is in recognition of his "important contributions to the study of angiosperm evolutionary developmental biology."  Ned will be honored at the February meeting of the AAAS in Washington DC.

Congratulations Ned!

 

Alan Townsend wins NSF grant to study nitrogen in the biosphere - 12/16/2010

Alan Townsend and CoPI Eric Davidson (Woods Hole Res Ctr) have just learned that their NSF-RCN "Reactive Nitrogen in the Biosphere" has been funded ($499,791).   The grant will focus on key unknowns in changing N cycle, concentrating on the U.S., and provides one source of funding to help launch a U.S.- scale assessment of the changing nitrogen cycle, its impacts, and some potential solutions.  This effort is tied to OSTP's national assessment procedure that was mandated as part of the US global change research act of 1992.

Congratulations Alan!!

 

Great news for Nichole Barger - Funding from NASA/USDA to study carbon management - 11/29/2010

Nichole Barger, and Co PIs Jason Neff, Lisa Dilling, and Jana Milford have been awarded $570 from NASA/USDA for their grant entitled: Carbon management on public lands in the Intermountain West: Multi-scale analysis of carbon stock response to human and natural disturbances.  They will develop an integrated multi-scale approach to the evaluation of carbon stocks and fate under different management on public lands in the Intermountain West.

 

Martin lab published in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society - 11/16/2010

With coauthors Chrysoula Gubili, Raşit Bilgin, Evrim Kalkan, S. Ünsal Karhan, Catherine S. Jones, David W. Sims, Hakan Kabasakal, and Leslie R. Noble, Andy published:  Antipodean white sharks on a Mediterranean walkabout? Historical dispersal leads to genetic discontinuity and an endangered anomalous population.

Abstract: The provenance of white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) in the Mediterranean is both a conundrum and an important conservation issue. Considering this species's propensity for natal philopatry, any evidence that the Mediterranean stock has little or no contemporary immigration from the Atlantic would suggest that it is extraordinarily vulnerable. To address this issue we sequenced the mitochondrial control region of four rare Mediterranean white sharks. Unexpectedly, the juvenile sequences were identical although collected at different locations and times, showing little genetic differentiation from Indo-Pacific lineages, but strong separation from geographically closer Atlantic/western Indian Ocean haplotypes. Historical long-distance dispersal (probably a consequence of navigational error during past climatic oscillations) and potential founder effects are invoked to explain the anomalous relationships of this isolated ‘sink’ population, highlighting the present vulnerability of its nursery grounds.

 

CU Buff and EBIO major Nate Solder nominated for Heisman award - 11/8/2010

In addition to being a successful EBIO major who wants to be a veterinarian, Nate Solder plays on CU's football team.  He has been nominated as a finalist for the William V. Campbell Trophy, also known as the academic Heisman.  The NFF presents the award annually to college football's top scholar-athlete. It is the most prestigious academic award in college football.   Read about him in the Daily Camera.

www.dailycamera.com/ci_16453307?source=most_emailed

 

Barbara Demmig-Adams' paper named a classic - 10/21/2011

One of Barbara Demmig-Adams' articles has been named as a "Plant Physiology Classic". This is a collection of 25 seminal papers that have shaped research in plant biology.  The story and a link is below.

www.plantphysiol.org/misc/classics.xhtml

 

New Blog to Serve as Forum for Collections Digitization - 10/15/2010

A new blog has been created to assist the biological collections community to discuss and share ideas about the National Science Foundation’s solicitation for “Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections (ADBC).” The blog aims to “encourage the community to begin to communicate openly about the ADBC solicitation including questions, ideas, intentions, and other related issues.” The creators of the blog hope that users will present their intentions for and philosophies behind proposed Home Uniting Biocollections (HUB) and Thematic Collections Networks (TCNs) submissions to NSF.

The blog is an outcome of the community round-table discussion hosted by the University of Colorado at Boulder on September 17, 2010. Meeting hosts Patrick Kociolek and Robert Guralnick, both of the Colorado University Museum of Natural History, have agreed to continue the round-table discussion, via the blog.

To access the blog, visit nsfadbc.wordpress.com.

 

Brent Hawkins receives graduate student poster award - 10/5/2010

David Stock and Brent Hawkins attended the Southwest Regional Meeting of the Society for Developmental Biology in Austin, TX over the past weekend, where they presented a talk and a poster, respectively. Brent, an MA student co-advised by Alex Cruz and David, received an award for the second best graduate student poster at the meeting. His poster was entitled, "Have teleost barbels evoloved by the co-option of fin developmental mechanisms?" and the prize was a copy of Eric Davidson's book "The Regulatory Genome." Congratulations to Brent!

 

EBIO in top 11 graduate programs - 9/28/2010

EBIO ranked 11th among the top 20 Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Programs in the nation by the National Research Council!

 

Medeiros lab published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Science - 9/20/2010

With coauthors Robert Cerny, Maria Cattell, Tatjana Sauka-Spengler, Marianne Bronner-Fraser, and Feiqiao Yu, Dan is the lead author on:

Evidence for the prepattern/cooption model of vertebrate jaw evolution

Abstract: The appearance of jaws was a turning point in vertebrate evolution because it allowed primitive vertebrates to capture and process large, motile prey. The vertebrate jaw consists of separate dorsal and ventral skeletal elements connected by a joint. How this structure evolved from the unjointed gill bar of a jawless ancestor is an unresolved question in vertebrate evolution. To understand the developmental bases of this evolutionary transition, we examined the expression of 12 genes involved in vertebrate pharyngeal patterning in the modern jawless fish lamprey. We find nested expression of Dlx genes, as well as combinatorial expression of Msx, Hand and Gsc genes along the dorso-ventral (DV) axis of the lamprey pharynx, indicating gnathostome-type pharyngeal patterning evolved before the appearance of the jaw. In addition, we find that Bapx and Gdf5/6/7, key regulators of joint formation in gnathostomes, are not expressed in the lamprey first arch, whereas Barx, which is absent from the intermediate first arch in gnathostomes, marks this domain in lamprey. Taken together, these data support a new scenario for jaw evolution in which incorporation of Bapx and Gdf5/6/7 into a preexisting DV patterning program drove the evolution of the jaw by altering the identity of intermediate first-arch chondrocytes. We present this “Pre-pattern/Cooption” model as an alternative to current models linking the evolution of the jaw to the de novo appearance of sophisticated pharyngeal DV patterning.

 

Demmig-Adams and Adams lab in funding coup - 8/24/2010

William and Barbara receive two (yes two) grants:

-Collaborative Research (Arabidopsis 2010): Ecological Genomics of Adaptation to the Environment (2010-2014).  $3,154,225 from the National Science Foundation. PI with W. Adams for CU-Boulder portion ($587,908 to the University of Colorado); PIs for MSU portion Douglas Schemske & Michael Thomashow, PI for CSU portion John McKay

The goal of this collaboration is to dissect the genetic basis of high and low temperature tolerance in the model plant Arabidopsis by a comprehensive study including quantitative genetics, molecular approaches, and physiology.  We will utilize ecotypes of this species from Sweden and Italy as well as hundreds of recombinant inbred lines produced from these parents.  Our portion focuses on several candidate parameters that may represent bottlenecks to the ceiling for photosynthesis and plant productivity under different temperature regimes.

-Extractive Photobioreactor (2011-2014).  $524,819 from ConocoPhillips Company. Co-PI with John Pellegrino (Mechanical Engineering, CU-Boulder), Robert Davis (Dean Engineering & Applied Science, CU-Boulder) & William Adams ($187,828 to Demmig-Adams & Adams)

The goal of this collaboration is to develop new approaches towards the cost-effective production and extraction of energy carriers (suitable for biofuel production) from cultures of microalgae.  Our portion focuses on further enhancing the energy carrier exudation by algae (that we were able to induce under our current ConocoPhillips grant) via both biological triggers and engineering approaches for the separation of these energy  carriers from the algae.

 

Guralnick lab wins NSF grant to track biodiversity - 7/21/2010

More good news from the Guralnick Lab! Rob has just gotten the formal notification of a $1.8 Million award that partners CU, the University of Florida, the University of Hawaii, UC Berkeley and the Smithsonian. A fine set of collaborators!

The title of the grant is: BiSciCol Tracker: Towards a tagging and tracking infrastructure for biodiversity science collections”

Abstract:  Scientific specimens serve as the anchor for an expanding array of information that grows and changes with time about the specimen and the group that the specimen represents. Unfortunately, specimens, their associated data and metadata are scattered geographically across institutions and across independent computer systems and are very difficult to access or synthesize. Current data sharing systems such as DigIR are one-way channels and do not allow for quick and easy two-way linking of information or updates as new knowledge is gained. The BiSciCol team will 1) develop a tracking and annotation system based on globally unique identifiers (GUIDs) and ontological relationships; 2) deploy this system and others in a Virtual Information Appliance (VIA) as a Virtual Machine (VM); and 3) document and implement a set of use cases and practices, based on characteristic physical and digital workflows in the community. BiSciCol is designed on the simple premise that changes to data objects are trackable with GUIDs, and that semantic relationships are assignable and discoverable among physical and data objects. Project deliverables are designed to benefit the entire biological collections community by taking initial steps to implement core information infrastructure based on established challenges in the community. Collections data are critical to land management decisions, maintenance of biodiversity, and analysis of the causes and consequence of climate change. BiSciCol will improve data quality and quantity for these communities of non- scientists and scientists. BiSciCol will actively engage use communities through training workshops, summer student internships, and community BioBlitz enhancements.

 

Russ Monson wins DOE grant to study carbon cycling - 7/9/2010

Russ Monson has just received good news from the Terrestrial Carbon Processes program at the Department of Energy (DOE). They are funding his recent proposal, entitled “Carbon cycling dynamics in response to pine beetle infection and climate variation.”

Funding is for $1.03 million for three years to study the soil carbon cycling dynamics in lodgepole pine forests damaged by pine beetles.  It includes as Co-I's, Alan Townsend and Scott Lehman (from INSTAAR), Dave Moore (King's College, London), Dave Bowling (Univ of Utah) and Stuart Grandy (Michigan State Univ). Dave Bowling, Dave Moore and Stuart Grandy are former students from CU (Bowling and Moore were in the Monson Lab and Grandy was in the Neff Lab in Geology). Most of the funds will go to CU as the prime grantee, with sub-contracts to Univ of Utah and MSU.  The study will use both 13C and 14C stable isotope analyses to study the age and chemical origins of soil-respired CO2, and advanced chemical analyses using pyrolysis-GC-MS techniques to examine changes in the composition in soil organic matter following tree death due to beetle attack. The grant will also provide post-doc support for Nicole Trahan.

While this is excellent news for CU and EBIO (especially past and present Monson students), I don't think that the citizens of the state will feel any better about the ravages of the mountain pine beetle.

 

Graduate student Joey Hubbard on the cover of Trends in Genetics - 4/26/2010

Joey Hubbard and others (including Becca Safran) have a new paper in Trends in Genetics and they captured the cover. Joey chose the photos and made the collage. (The zebrafish is from the Stock lab)

 

Leigh Cooper wins Creativity Award - 4/25/2010

This academic year Center For the American West hosted the 11th annual writing competition to award Thompson Awards for Western American  Writing. Leigh Cooper's submission entitled "Branding Day" won in the "Creative Nonfiction/Memoir" category. Academics know the value of clear writing, and generally admire talented writers.

Nicely done, Leigh.

 

Philip Taylor and Alan Townsend published in Nature - 4/23/2010

After examining more than a million data points, Philip Taylor and Alan Townsend have discovered a global relationship between nitrates and organic carbon that is mediated by microbes. Their article is in the April 22 issue of Nature.

Here is a link to a news release of their results and the announcement of the paper:

www.colorado.edu/news/r/5288170c8cfc8a8eeba6e14a2a0868eb.html

Congratulations to both Philip and Alan.

 

Graduate student John Mischler receives EPA STAR grant - 4/20/2010

John Mischler, in the Townsend lab, has been awarded an EPA STAR grant. Here is the title and abstract from his proposal:

Catching the Itch: A Study of Cercarial Dermatitis in Colorado

Trends in disease emergence and transmission are in flux throughout much of the globe. Some diseases are re-emerging while others are crossing over from livestock to humans. Within this new environment of emerging and re-emerging diseases it is prudent to cultivate an understanding of the ecological conditions that provide a favorable environment for disease transmission; biomedical strategies alone will not succeed in holding back this flood of new infections. While control measures such as antibiotics, vaccines, and water purification have provided some level of stability in the past, the rate and scale of global change in agriculture, trade, biodiversity, species invasions, and other complex factors have severely compromised our ability to understand and respond to infectious diseases.  A piecemeal approach to disease control and treatment is no longer a viable option; any successful approach to disease control in the 21st century must integrate biomedical and ecological approaches in order to understand and curb the spread of infectious disease.

I propose to study the links between nutrient-driven eutrophication and pesticide loading and an increased risk of several vector-born diseases. I will utilize both field observations as well as experimental work to understand how changes in nutrient cycling and pesticide loading of aquatic ecosystems in Colorado affect the emergence and transmission of cercarial dermatitis.

Cercarial Dermatitis (commonly referred to in the US as ‘swimmer’s itch’) is an intense rash that forms in response to trematode parasites (schistosomes) penetrating the human skin. The schistosome parasite first infects an aquatic snail as an intermediate host to complete one stage of its life cycle. The parasite develops within the snail until it has matured into a form able to infect its terminal host, at which point the parasite is shed into the water column in large numbers. These parasites (called cercariae) swim until they locate a terminal host, at which point they burrow through the skin and into the host’s body.

 

Patrik Nosil and Tim Farkas published in PNAS - 4/20/2010

Patrik Nosil and Tim Farkas are currently in the field in California, studying speciation in their model system of Timema walking-sticks. Patrik reports that the work is going very well, but he also wanted to share a spate good news.

During his year in Germany, Patrik established a collaboration with Jeff Feder, and evolutionary biologist at Notre Dame. They have been studying the genomics of speciation, and their efforts are coming to fruition.

Patrik writes:

Much progress has been made in understanding the genetic basis of speciation; many individual “speciation genes” have now been identified that cause reproductive isolation. Much less attention has been given to the causes and consequences of genome-wide patterns of divergence during speciation. Thus, major questions remain concerning how the individual speciation genes are arrayed within the genomes of actively diverging taxa, and how this affects speciation. Jeff and I have been empirically and theoretically exploring this genomic perspective of speciation.

Jeff and I have two theoretical papers now in press about how the effects of natural selection are expected to spread throughout the genome (both at Evolution). In an empirical and explicitly experimental test of these theories, we found that natural selection affects a much larger proportion of the genome than currently thought. These results highlight how the individual genes driving speciation can be embedded within an actively diverging genome. We are pleased to announce that this empirical study is accepted for publication in the Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. Please find the abstract for this empirical paper, and citation information for all three papers.

Another bit of good news is that a future graduate student (Aaron Comeault) who is joining my lab in September has been awarded a fellowship from Canada (NSERC) that is similar to an NSF pre-doc (21,000K per year over three years).

Michel, A.P., S. Sim, T. Powell, P. Nosil, and J.L. Feder. Widespread genomic divergence during sympatric speciation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA in press.

Feder, J.L., and P. Nosil. 2010. The efficacy of divergence hitchhiking in generating genomic islands during ecological speciation. Evolution in press.

Feder, J.L., and P. Nosil. 2009. Chromosomal inversions and species differences: when are genes affecting adaptive divergence and reproductive isolation expected to reside within inversions? Evolution 63: 3061-3075.

 

Graduate student Taryn Morris awarded Schlumberger Fellowship - 4/16/2010

Taryn Morris, a first year PhD student in the Barger Lab was recently awarded a Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future Fellowship. This fellowship provides up to $50,000 a year over three years, which will be used to further support her studies of invasive plants in the Fynbos ecosystems of South Africa.

The Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future fellowships are awarded to women academics in science and engineering from developing and emerging countries, and provide funding for advanced graduate study. The long-term goal of the Faculty for the Future program is to generate conditions that result in more young women pursuing careers in the scientific disciplines. Grant recipients are therefore selected as much for their leadership capabilities as their scientific talents and they are expected to return to their home countries to continue their academic careers and inspire other young women.

Taryn also receives some support from a Mellon Foundation Award to Nichole Barger and Jason Neff.

Congratulations to both Taryn and Nichole.

This has been a remarkable year for EBIO!

 

Graduate student Joseph Mihaljevic awarded NSF fellowship - 4/15/2010

Fantastic news. EBIO has received a 4th NSF Graduate Fellowship!

Joseph R. Mihaljevic, currently at Washington University, will be joining our graduate program and working in Piet Johnson’s lab. The title of his project is Effects of Metacommunity Size on Host Diversity and Parasite Dilution.

Here is some further information from his proposal:

Many wildlife species are reservoirs for pathogens that affect other wildlife, livestock, and/or human health1. Since sudden increases in parasite prevalence are commonly associated with emergent epizootics1 – epidemic disease outbreaks in animal populations – understanding general patterns of parasite diversity and prevalence is an important challenge to community ecology. The dilution effect hypothesis predicts that increasing local diversity of parasite hosts can decrease the prevalence of certain parasites (e.g. fewer parasites per host) via, for example, increasing these parasites’ encounter rates with incompetent hosts2. Yet increasing the local diversity of hosts also yields a more locally diverse parasite community3. While these results are seemingly contradictory host diversity could have differential effects on parasite diversity and prevalence and, therefore, the probability of epizootics.

I will address: (1) How does metacommunity size affect local host diversity? and (2) Do these changes of local host diversity differentially affect parasite diversity and prevalence?

 

Nosil, Demmig-Adams and McKenzie awarded Innovative grant - 4/13/2010

CU’s Innovative Grant Program has awarded grants to Patrik Nosil, Barbara Demmig-Adams and Val McKenzie

Val McKenzie's proposal, "Symbiotic microbial communities on amphibian skin and their role in disease resistance," was awarded  $42,824.

Barbara’s grant title is "Novel Genetic Dissection of Temperature Tolerance in the Model Plant Arabidopsis."

Patrik’s grant title is "Adaptation, natural selection and the origin of species: a genomic approach."

Congratulations to Val, Patrik, and Barbara.

 

Lisette Arellano awarded NSF graduate fellowship - 4/10/2010

An incoming graduate student, Lisette Arellano, has been awarded an NSF graduate fellowship and an AGEP fellowship through CU! Lisette Arellano will be in Val McKenzie’s lab.

Project title for NSF proposal: Land use and amphibian decline: A closer look at the consequences of monoculture and polyculture for amphibians in agricultural landscapes.  Lisette plans to examine amphibians, invertebrate diversity and parasites in different types of agriculture to determine the effects of specific agricultural practices on overall aquatic diversity and food web functioning.

This is the third NSF graduate fellowship this year, our best year ever.

 

Noah Fierer receives prestigious NSF CAREER Award - 4/9/2010

Fantastic news! Noah Fierer has just been informed that his CAREER proposal has been recommended for funding.

An integrated study of the effects of nutrient additions on grassland soil microbial communities"

Amount = $655,617 over 5 years.

Here is the project summary:

Terrestrial ecosystems across the globe are receiving elevated inputs of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) due to the direct or indirect activities of humans. Soil microbes play critical roles in the functioning of ecosystems and the maintenance of ecosystem productivity, yet the impacts of the increases in nutrient availability on soil microbes are poorly understood. We do not know how the overall structure and diversity of microbial communities is influenced by nutrient additions, which nutrients are most influential, whether microbial responses mirror plant responses, and which mechanisms are responsible for the observed differences among microbial communities. To address these knowledge gaps, soils will be collected from 35 grasslands throughout the world that have been receiving standardized, experimental additions of N and P as part of the recently-established Nutrient Network (NutNet) experiment. By leveraging this pre-existing experiment, we can directly compare microbial and plant responses to nutrient additions across grassland sites that represent a broad range of climatic conditions, plant communities, and soil types to build a more comprehensive understanding of microbial responses to nutrient additions than would be possible by focusing on just a single site or a handful of sites. We will also conduct a lab-based study, controlling N, P, and organic carbon inputs to soil in order to discern the specific mechanisms that may be responsible for the microbial responses observed in the field.

 

Katie Dosch awarded NSF predoctoral fellowship - 4/7/2010

Here is her title and abstract:

Diversity and disease: how do changes in pathogen communities influence disease risk for amphibians?

Growing evidence suggests that diverse ecosystems provide a biological “buffer” from certain human and wildlife diseases, and understanding the underlying mechanisms is essential to predicting the impact of emerging diseases.  Wetland ecosystems provide an ideal study system for investigating the multifaceted relationship between biodiversity and disease.  I propose to study the relationship between host diversity, parasite diversity, and disease risk for amphibians in freshwater ecosystems through a combination of a broad field survey and a mesocosm experiment.  The overarching question of my proposal is: How do changes in biodiversity, caused by land use change, affect the diversity of trematode parasites and disease risk for amphibians?  I predict that decreasing biodiversity of hosts will translate into decreased trematode parasite diversity and higher disease risks for amphibians.  I will sample 60 ponds over two years across a gradient of land use and biodiversity in three California counties (Santa Clara, Alameda, and Contra Costa) to determine the diversity at three component community trophic levels: trematode parasites, aquatic snails, and amphibians.  To explicitly test the mechanism(s) linking parasite biodiversity and disease in amphibians, I also propose to conduct a mesocosm experiment manipulating the levels of parasite diversity (low, medium, and high diversity).

Congratulations, Katie!

 

Matt Wilkins awarded NSF predoctoral fellowship - 4/7/2010

NSF has awarded a predoctoral fellowship to Matt Wilkins for his thesis research on sexual selection and incipient speciation in barn swallows. Matt leaves in a few days for Israel and Turkey, so try to congratulate him before he disappears. The title and abstract for the project are below, as well as two photos taken by Matt last year in Turkey.

Can divergent sexual selection reduce hybridization between sympatric subspecies?

Comparative and theoretical work from a wide variety of animal taxa suggest that sexual selection plays an important role in speciation. However, very few field studies have attempted to directly assess whether divergent sexual selection pressures may be involved in the formation of reproductive barriers. In the current study, I will characterize sexual selection pressures between two subspecies of the barn swallow (Hirundo rustica transitiva and Hirundo rustica rustica) with overlapping ranges in southern Turkey. I have already established a collaboration with a researcher from Akdeniz University and a new study population near the town of Bogazkent. Because H. r. transitiva and H. r. rustica have divergent female mating preferences in allopatry, these subspecies provide an ideal opportunity to test the role of mate choice behavior in the establishment of reproductive barriers in sympatry. I will use microsatellite markers to assign paternity and derive precise measures of reproductive success in order to estimate selection pressures for morphological and song features. The same genetic markers will also be used to determine rates of gene flow between subspecies in the contact zone. Because it is known that these subspecies have different patterns of migration, feather isotopic analysis will indicate subspecies membership for individuals with intermediate phenotypes. Collectively, these data will allow for a thorough characterization of multimodal sexual selection pressures, migratory behaviors, and gene flow between two barn swallow subspecies in a contact zone. This study will determine if divergent sexual selection pressures found between subspecies in allopatry collapse in sympatry, or whether divergent mate choice cues result in stable reproductive barriers when sister taxa come into contact. This work represents the most comprehensive examination of sexual selection pressures between sympatric taxa to date, and will contribute to our understanding of how the evolution of mating behavior affects population divergence.

 

NSF grant to Rob Guralnick - 4/5/2010

Rob Guralnick has received an NSF Grant entitled Map of Life: An infrastructure for integrating global species distribution knowledge. This new collaborative research award is from NSF Advances in Biological Informatics and is split between Rob and Walter Jetz at Yale University.  The award amount is $990K over three years, with $531K going to Yale and $459K going to Boulder.

Abstract

Despite hundreds of years of active exploration, human knowledge of the distribution of biodiversity remains very limited. A fundamental factor in this shortcoming is that the majority of direct and indirect information about species’ distributions has not been mobilized and integrated. While researchers can readily access fine-scale environmental data with global coverage, access to integrated species distribution information at validated precision remains elusive. Investigators at Yale University and the University of Colorado Boulder are awarded a grant to develop an interactive, online species distribution workbench and knowledge-base – called the ‘Map of Life’ - as the fundamental mechanism for documentation, integration, and advance of human biodiversity distribution knowledge.

Congratulations to Rob!

 

Noah Fierer publishes in PNAS - 3/16/2010

Noah Fierer and his colleagues (including Elizabeth Costello, previously in EBIO, now at Stanford) have a paper coming out in PNAS about the possibility of identifying individuals from the community of bacteria on their hands. This was in the Boulder Camera this morning, but it has already been picked up by 227 news  outlets.

On the NPR interview (below) Noah says:

Noah Fierer of the University of Colorado, Boulder, studies the bacteria that live on skin.

"Our bodies are covered in bacteria," says Fierer, "but most of these are harmless, and some of them may actually be beneficial. So it's nothing to be paranoid about." In fact, there are about a hundred different kinds of bacteria that typically grow on human skin.

And that gave Fierer an idea. "We leave this trail of bacteria everywhere we go, and the idea was could we use this trail to identify who had touched a given object or surface," he says.

The reason this bacterial trail could be used to identify someone is that we differ in the kinds of bacteria we carry around. Each of us has bacterial communities that are unique to us. And bacterial communities don't change very much over time.

Paper featured in 227 news outlets (and counting) - according to Google News. Many of these explicitly mention EBIO.

Also interviews on NPR "Morning Edition"

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124709981&ps=cprs

and the BBC.

Congratulate Noah, but maybe you don't want to shake his hand...

 

Clint Francis awarded postdoctoral fellowship at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) at Duke - 2/26/2010

Clinton Francis has just heard that he has been awarded a two year postdoctoral fellowships at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) at Duke.

Here are the title and the summary of his project:

Acoustic signal space conservatism: a framework for signal flexibility in noise

PROJECT SUMMARY

Background noise interferes with acoustic communication and represents a selective force in the evolution of acoustic signals. A growing focus in the field of acoustic communication is how animals cope with noisy environments to effectively dispatch their signals. Recent advances have documented acoustic signal flexibility in noisy environments, yet others suggest that species have limited signal flexibility to reduce acoustic interference. Despite new empirical work, the field lacks a strong theoretical framework from which clear predictions can be made regarding how and why species adjust or fail to adjust signals. I will develop the acoustic signal space conservatism framework based on the idea that there are intrinsic characteristics that differ among taxa that restrict signal flexibility in response to noise interference. The type and degree of flexibility depends on phylogenetic history, current vocal function, and the nature of the interference noise. I will map vocal parameters (e.g., frequency, temporal, amplitude features) onto phylogenies to evaluate the degree to which acoustic signal space is phylogenetically conserved within and among avian taxa. I will use this framework to predict and test temporal space partitioning among co-occurring frequency space competitors and evaluate the degree to which a species’ frequency space predicts sensitivity to noise pollution. This framework will provide a platform from which we can begin to reveal the phylogenetic distribution of signal flexibility across multiple acoustic signal space axes. Results will be immediately relevant to understanding the role of acoustics in structuring animal communities and for evaluating species sensitivities to noise pollution.

Be sure to congratulate him, and ask him if he has any other irons in the fire.

 

Safran lab in PLoS One - 2/25/2010

Becca Safran, Matt Wilkins, Joey Hubbard and Julie Marling have published a paper in Plos One, describing the dynamic nature of carotenoid concentrations in barn swallows, and relationships with fitness. Here is a link to the paper:

www.plosone.org/article/metrics/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009420

Congratulations to the Safran Lab!

 

Ned Friedman keynote speaker at Darwin Day - 2/10/2010

Ned Friedman will deliver the Keynote Address for the Darwin Day celebration at the University of Tennessee. This is the most recent of his many activities (teaching and lecturing) expressing his abiding interest in pre-Darwinian evolutionary biology.

Congratulations to Ned!

 

Mike Grant is an ACE! - 2/1/2010

Mike Grant is a recipient of ACE award by the American Council on Education for his technological innovations to facilitate interactions with foreign students. He will be presenting a paper on this work at the International Collaborative 2010 meeting Arlington, VA later this week, and he will be honored at the annual ACE meeting in Phoenix on March 6. The announcement of his award is online:

www.colorado.edu/insidecu/editions/2010/1-26/awardskudos.html

Congratulations, Mike.

 

Alan Townsend in Scientific American - 1/23/2010

Alan Townsend and Robert Howarth have just had their article entitled "Fixing the Global Nitrogen Problem" appear in Scientific American. This article looks at nitrogen emanating from tailpipes, smokestacks and fertilizers, and their increasing impacts on environments around the world. You can view a copy at:

www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v302/n2/full/scientificamerican0210-64.html

Congratulations, Alan!

 

MORPH morphs into microMORPH - 1/11/2010

Ned Friedman and Pam Diggle just got word from NSF that their NSF Research Coordination Network grant proposal, "microMORPH:  Microevolutionary and Organismic Research in Plant History" will be funded at 100% ($481,700).  This is the first time they have ever coauthored a grant proposal (or research paper) together.

Brief abstract:

In the midst of the explosive growth in genetic and genomic information, the future intellectual development of plant evo-devo stands at a remarkable juncture.  For the first time since Darwin opened up the microevolutionary paradigm of descent with modification through natural selection, we have the opportunity to understand the developmental underpinnings of evolutionary processes at the intraspecific and interspecific levels of biological organization in both model system taxa and, especially, diverse non-model system species.  The goal of the microMORPH RCN is to promote and stimulate significant interactions between the intellectually diverse subdisciplines of evolutionary ecology, population genetics, developmental morphology, phylogenetics, and molecular developmental biology.  Major planned networking activities include 1) a series of intergenerational and interdisciplinary workshops involving graduate students and faculty, 2) support for cross-disciplinary training opportunities for students (undergraduate summer internships and graduate rotations away from the home institution) and postdoctorals and junior faculty, 3) outreach activities to underrepresented groups in the sciences (through mini-symposia to be held at institutions with substantial minority student populations), and 4) development of a website for the µMORPH RCN.

Much more information on MORPH is available at:

MORPH homepage: www.colorado.edu/eeb/MORPH/

Congratulations to Ned and Pam!

 

Stephanie Mayer an ASSETT to the department - 1/10/2010

We have just received notification that ASSETT, the Arts and Sciences Support of Education Through Technology has funded a proposal submitted by Stephanie Mayer and entitled "Digital Imaging Systems for Plant Bio Lab". The award is for $3,473.

Congratulations and thanks to Stephanie!

 

Christy McCain receives NSF award - 1/10/2010

Last week NSF called Christy McCain to give her the welcome news that NSF was funding her proposed study, entitled

Diversity and Climate Change: using elevational gradients to uncover processes underlying mammalian species distributions

Funding is from the Population and Community Ecology Panel, for $482,843 over three years. I have copied part of the abstract below.

Be sure to congratulate her. What a fine start to the semester!

The objective of this proposal is to use rodent distributions on two contrasting montane gradients in the Southern Rocky Mountains—the San Juans and the Front Range—to test factors driving current diversity patterns and to detect range shifts due to climate change. Elevational gradients hold enormous potential for understanding biodiversity since variation in climate and species richness are on the same order of magnitude as other ecological gradients (e.g., latitude), but occur over much smaller spatial scales with contrasting patterns. Over a three–year period, three elevational transects within each mountain range will be surveyed to document diversity, species distributions, population trends, climate, food resources, and habitat characteristics. These data will be used to robustly and simultaneously test the main ecological theories of diversity including temperature, precipitation, productivity, area, mid-domain effect, habitat heterogeneity, and biotic interactions. Comparisons between current ranges and historical distributions on a landscape scale will determine the degree of range shifts due to documented climate changes in temperature and precipitation.