Writer Sarah Kaplan interviewed Janine for The Washington Post.

Tapeworms are brainless, spineless, gutless parasites — and this scientist loves them – Sarah Kaplan – Washington Post – Caira – (1/2/18)

Here’s the link.

Margaret, Alejandro, and Gregor (remember Gregor!) are featured in The Atlantic ….

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/hummingbird-tongues/546992/

March 9, 2017

EEB doctoral student Samantha Apgar (Elphick lab) has been awarded The Garden Club of America’s Coastal Wetlands Scholarship, which provides research funds towards her dissertation work on extinction risk in specialist marsh birds.

EEB doctoral student Chris Nadeau (Urban lab) has won the Second Century Stewardship Fellowship from AAAS, Schoodic Institute, and Acadia National Park to support his research on zooplankton ecological and evolutionary responses to climate change in rock pool crustaceans. He’ll be heating up rock pools and manipulating precipitation on the rocky coast of Maine.

March 8, 2017

EEB graduate student Holly Brown has won the UConn Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award.

Read more about this award on the Center for Teaching and Learning web site.

Gene Likens has received a major award from the BBVA Foundation, the Frontiers of Knowledge in Ecology and Conservation Biology, recognizing his pioneering work on the discovery causes of acid rain and his long-term experimental studies of the impacts on ecosystems.

The award description on the BBVA website states “The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards seek to recognize and encourage world-class research and artistic creation, prizing contributions of broad impact for their originality and theoretical significance. The name of the scheme is intended to encapsulate both research work that successfully enlarges the scope of our current knowledge – pushing forward the frontiers of the known world – and the meeting and overlap of different disciplinary areas.”

To see recognition entries that have scrolled off this widget, visit the Recognition Archive page (also accessible under the Resources main menu item)

UConn EEB professor Pamela Diggle has been awarded a collaborative NSF grant entitled “Can variation in flower development explain variation in phenological responses to temperature?” in collaboration with Christa Mulder (University of Alaska, Fairbanks). 

Pam describes the funded project as follows:

Climate change has resulted in increased temperature means across the globe. Many angiosperms flower earlier in response to rising temperature, and the phenologies of these species are reasonably well predicted by models that account for spring (early growing season) and winter temperatures. Surprisingly, however, exceptions to the general pattern of precocious flowering are common. Many species either do not appear to respond or even delay flowering in, or following, warm years. Existing phenological models cannot explain such exceptions to the common association of advancing phenologies with warming temperatures. We will test 4 hypotheses that focus on developmental processes that occur during preformation of flowers in the year prior to anthesis and function. Field work will be done in Fairbanks and lab work at UConn.  We will also develop project “Late Bloomers”, a citizen science network involving Alaskan Natives in remote areas of the state.