Month: August 2019

Town Hall to discuss the recruitment initiative for the Executive Director of Fralin Life Sciences Institute

Post author By jcoker
Post date August 30, 2019

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Header image: Fralin Life Sciences Institute. Photo and design credit: Alex Crookshanks

VT NEWS | August 29, 2019

The Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation is hosting a town hall to discuss the recruitment planning for the executive director position of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute. This event is open to the university community.

Don Taylor, interim Vice President for Research and Innovation, Sally Morton, interim director of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute and dean of the College of Science, and Stefan Duma, search chair and executive director of the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science, will provide an overview and vision for the institute, review the search timeline and answer related questions.

Consulting firm Korn Ferry, who has been retained by the university to lead a national search, will be facilitating the discussion in preparation of this important recruitment effort.

The town hall session will be held in the conference center in Steger Hall on Monday, September 9, 2019 from 10:30 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. Zoom videoconferencing will be available for this discussion: https://virginiatech.zoom.us/s/860547172, meeting ID 860 547 172. Confidential inquiries, nominations, and application materials should be directed to Korn Ferry via email (vt-fralin@kornferry.com).

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CONTACT:
Kristin Rose
(540) 231-6614

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The most effective ways to curb climate change might surprise you

Post author By jcoker
Post date August 22, 2019

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From CNN | Originally published April 19,2019

The planet is barreling toward 1.5 degrees of global warming as soon as 2030 unless we enact “unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” a dire United Nations report warned in October 2018. To reduce our impact on the climate and avert disaster, it’s going to take more than switching to high-efficiency light bulbs. But the most effective ways that individuals, policy makers and businesses can reduce our carbon footprint might surprise you. Let’s see how much you know about what can be done to fight climate change.

Click here to take the quiz.

Biodiversity Conservation Disease Global Change News Research

Virginia Tech researchers receive $2.9 million grant with China to study infectious diseases

Post author By jcoker
Post date August 16, 2019

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Header image: College of Science researchers Kate Langwig (left) and Joseph Hoyt (right) received a grant to understand the long-term host and pathogen dynamics of white-nose syndrome in bats.

VT NEWS | August 14, 2019

Sometimes, scientists have to look to the past to better understand the present.

Researchers from the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science received a $2.9 million dollar award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) to understand the long-term host and pathogen dynamics of white-nose syndrome in bats. If all goes according to plan, their research will provide implications for other diseases as well.

Kate Langwig, an assistant professor, and Joseph Hoyt, a research scientist, are combining their respective specialties in infectious disease ecology with a focus on past and present disease patterns to find out how some hosts and pathogens can coexist, particularly after a host has already seen a massive decline from disease.

Langwig and Hoyt are collaborating with Chinese researchers to examine how the pathogen that is responsible for white-nose syndrome has affected bats across both time and space, and whether there are similar or different mechanisms that bats use to survive with this deadly disease.

White-nose syndrome is a fungal disease that spreads in the winter and causes lesions in the wings of bats during hibernation, setting off a cascade of physiological consequences that eventually lead to death. Since 2005, the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has killed millions of bats, causing bat population declines of 70 to 100 percent across multiple bat species in eastern North America.

However, researchers have noticed that, of the few remaining populations, some bats are less affected by the devastation, and they want to know why.

“Some of the major questions that we are trying to understand are ‘Is it the bats that are special? Or is it the environment that they inhabit? Or is it some combination of the two?’ If it is the bats that are special, it means that you could take individuals from these surviving populations and repopulate areas like Virginia, which has been really hard hit by white-nose syndrome,” said Langwig, who is also an affiliated faculty member of the Global Change Center.

Hoyt’s previous research has provided evidence that the fungus likely emerged in Eastern Asia tens of thousands of years ago and then spread to Europe thousands of years ago. It was likely introduced to northeastern North America in 2005.

Rhinolophus ferrumequinum bat population in China

One of the novel components of their research is that they are focusing on bat populations in Eurasia, which have survived with white-nose syndrome for millennia, to make their predictions about coexistence and the survival of bat populations.

“We are not just looking in areas where the disease has already caused impacts in North America and trying to understand the process of coexistence in our bat populations here, but we are actually trying to look at an area where that coexistence has already been reached – in Europe and Asia,” said Hoyt. “Can we draw some inference from these long-term dynamics to understand what our bat populations will look like in the future?”

In order to fine-tune their predictions about the future of white-nose syndrome afflicted bats, Langwig is building a mathematical integral projection model, a hybrid between an individually based model and a population model, which will allow researchers to make better predictions about disease dynamics.

She hopes that her modeling framework, combined with the experimental, observational, and genomic components of the project, can be applied to understand how hosts and pathogens are coexisting in other disease systems.

Both Langwig and Hoyt say that a large component of the grant is to identify the long-term effects of this disease on different bat populations, and if what we are seeing now in North America are actually long-term or short-term adaptations that will change in the future.

“If we see that this fungus is impacting populations in Eurasia, then it’s probably something that North American bats are going to face for a long time,” said Langwig.

This grant is an example of history in the making. This grant was the first time that this joint NSF, NIH, and USDA program has collaborated with NSFC.

In addition to Hoyt and Langwig, who are both affiliated faculty members of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute, the co-principal investigators of this project include Jiang Feng and Keping Sun from Northeast Normal University in China, Jeff Foster from Northern Arizona University, and Beth Shapiro and A. Marm Kilpatrick from the University of California Santa Cruz.

Langwig and Hoyt were hired as part of the Global Systems Science Destination Area in the College of Science at Virginia Tech to address issues of infectious disease. The Global Systems Science Destination Area is focused on understanding and finding solutions to critical problems associated with human activity and environmental change that together affect diseases states, water quality, and food production.

~ Written by Kendall Daniels

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CONTACT:
Kristin Rose
(540) 231-6614

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Climate Change Global Change News

July 2019 was hottest month on record for the planet

Post author By jcoker
Post date August 16, 2019

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From NOAA | August 15, 2019

Much of the planet sweltered in unprecedented heat in July, as temperatures soared to new heights in the hottest month ever recorded. The record warmth also shrank Arctic and Antarctic sea ice to historic lows. Here’s a closer look into NOAA’s latest monthly global climate report:

Climate by the numbers
July 2019

The average global temperature in July was 1.71 degrees F above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees, making it the hottest July in the 140-year record, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. The previous hottest month on record was July 2016.

Nine of the 10 hottest Julys have occurred since 2005—with the last five years ranking as the five hottest. Last month was also the 43rd consecutive July and 415th consecutive month with above-average global temperatures.

Year to date I January through July

The period from January through July produced a global temperature that was 1.71 degrees F above the 20th-century average of 56.9 degrees, tying with 2017 as the second-hottest year to date on record.

It was the hottest year to date for parts of North and South America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, the southern half of Africa, portions of the western Pacific Ocean, western Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean.

An annotated map of the world showing notable climate events that occurred around the world in July 2019. For details, see the short bulleted list below in our story (NOAA)

Download Image

More notable stats and facts

Record-low sea ice: Average Arctic sea ice set a record low for July, running 19.8% below average – surpassing the previous historic low of July 2012.

Average Antarctic sea-ice coverage was 4.3% below the 1981-2010 average, making it the smallest for July in the 41-year record.

Some cool spots: Parts of Scandinavia and western and eastern Russia had temperatures at least 2.7 degrees F below average.

More > Access NOAA’s full climate report and download images.

Media contact
John Bateman, 301-713-9604

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Climate Change Conservation Faculty Spotlight Global Change News Science Communication

Researchers receive NSF grant to create Ecological Forecasting Research Coordination Network

Post author By jcoker
Post date August 13, 2019

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Header image: A photo from one of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) sites, a continent-wide research effort that standardizes data collection across 80 sites and is funded by the NSF. Photo courtesy of Leslie Goldman.

From VT NEWS | August 12, 2019

During the 21st century, citizens around the world will continue to face grand environmental challenges, including climate change, land-use, and invasive species.

How we deal and adapt to these ecological challenges will have global implications.

A group of researchers, led by Quinn Thomas, associate professor in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment at Virginia Tech, received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to tackle some of these grand environmental challenges with the creation of a new Ecological Forecasting Initiative Research Coordination Network (EFI-RCN).

“The EFI-RCN will build a community of practice dedicated to improving our capacity to forecast continental-scale environmental changes using data from the National Ecological Observatory Network, or NEON, which is a research effort that standardizes data collection across 81 sites that span the diverse ecosystems of the entire U.S.,” said Thomas, who is an affiliated faculty member of the Global Change Center, an arm of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute at Virginia Tech.

Funded by the NSF, NEON helps researchers understand the rapid and complex ecological changes we are facing on the North American continent.

The EFI-RCN is composed of a network of collaborators throughout Virginia Tech and across the United States. Joining Thomas on the EFI-RCN steering committee from Virginia Tech are Associate Professor Cayelan Carey from the Department of Biological Sciences and Assistant Professor Leah Johnson from the Department of Statistics, both from the College of Science and affiliated faculty members of the Global Change Center.

The recently awarded grant helps galvanize the ecological forecasting research by bringing together scientists, government officials, and stakeholders in meetings and other activities. The diversity of perspectives brought by all involved helps to create a robust network.

“All partner institutions have their strengths,” Thomas said. “Notre Dame is leading education; Minnesota is leading decision support and partner engagement; Boston University is leading tools and methods development; and a NEON scientist is helping with standards and environmental informatics.”

The Virginia Tech researchers bring a strong foundation in ecological forecasting and mathematical modeling to this collaboration.

The EFI-RCN researchers are using NEON data to create ecological forecasting models that help predict the changes in forest composition, water quality, and vector-borne disease, among other issues. Anticipating and responding to these changes requires development of novel approaches that integrate data and observation across multiple sites.

“There is a real need for ecology to become a more predictive science. With the EFI-RCN, we can ramp up iterative forecasting with shorter time scales and learn quickly about how to make better predictions,” said Michael Dietze, a co-principal investigator on the grant and associate professor at Boston University who specializes in forecasting theory and has run previous near-term ecological forecasts with NEON data.

Some of the activities that will bring these partners together include a forecasting challenge to compare and refine how models predict NEON data, a hackathon to help partners develop shared resources, and efforts to develop best practices and community standards.

The EFI-RCN builds on a successful first meeting of the Ecological Forecasting Initiative in 2019 where Dietze and Heather Lynch, associate professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University, brought together an interdisciplinary group of more than 100 natural and social scientists, public health professionals, engineers, and industry and federal agency representatives, with the goal of advancing research and collaboration around the use of near-term (subdaily to decadal) forecasts to understand, manage, and conserve ecosystems. These 100 collaborators will become part of the EFI-RCN.

Conference hosted by the Ecological Forecasting Initiative — In 2019, the Ecological Forecasting Initiative hosted a conference in Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of John Prandato.

“The end goal is to think about ecological forecasting like weather forecasting. It’s a tool used in decision-making and we want people to be able to rely on it,” Thomas said.

The broader impacts of ecological forecasting are that it helps us anticipate changes to ecological systems so that we can then take action. Unlike a long-range climate change model, ecological forecasting models are deliberately built on shorter time scales — daily to decadal, for instance — to help people understand changes and act now.

The predictive models improve in real-time. As forecasters learn more about how the models are working, they can fine-tune them based on which predictions came true.

But, before those predictions can take place, collaborators must coordinate with one another to lay the groundwork. The EFI-RCN is a big part of that groundwork. With the field of ecological forecasting still very much in development, a strong coordination network is essential to making sure that the best models are built. Now that NEON’s data sets are complete and fully available, researchers can get to the task of building their predictive models to answer both theoretical and applied questions.

“We’re trying to discover what is predictable in nature, to test and understand how nature works, but also to anticipate changes and help support management and conservation,” said Thomas. “In the end, if there’s a community of ecological forecasters that identify this as one of the main things they do, and they have a common language and a set of overarching objectives they’re working towards, then we’ve been successful.”

~Written by Tiffany Trent and Kristin Rose

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Climate Change Global Change News Sustainable Agriculture

To Slow Global Warming, U.N. Warns Agriculture Must Change

Post author By jcoker
Post date August 8, 2019

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Header image: Large swaths of forest have been cut down in Brazil in recent decades to make room for farming. Deforestation contributes to global warming, and reversing it will be necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change. Image credit: Andre Penner/AP.

From NPR | August 8, 2019

Humans must drastically alter food production to prevent the most catastrophic effects of global warming, according to a new report from the United Nations panel on climate change.

The panel of scientists looked at the climate change effects of agriculture, deforestation and other land use, such as harvesting peat and managing grasslands and wetlands. Together, those activities generate about a third of human greenhouse gas emissions, including more than 40% of methane.

That’s important because methane is particularly good at trapping heat in the atmosphere. And the problem is getting more severe.

“Emissions from agricultural production are projected to increase,” the authors warn. “Delaying action” on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, they continue, “could result in some irreversible impacts on some ecosystems.”

This is the latest in a series of reports from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The new report adds weight and detail to a warning put out by the same panel of scientists last fall, in which they sounded the alarm about the inadequacy of the pledges countries have made so far to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

At that time, the panel broadly suggested that farmland would need to shrink and forests would need to grow to keep Earth from getting more than 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than it was in the preindustrial era. Global temperatures have already risen about 1 degree Celsius in the past 150 years.

To meet that temperature target, global greenhouse gas emissions will need to fall by 40% to 50% in the next decade. Scientists say the only way to achieve that reduction is to significantly increase the amount of land that’s covered in trees and other vegetation and significantly reduce the amount of methane and other greenhouse gases that come from raising livestock such as cows, sheep and goats.

The new report offers some broad suggestions for how countries might achieve that. For example, for countries that have lost tree cover in the past century, reforestation can help suck greenhouse gases out of the air, while also preventing soil from drying up. Reducing food waste can also help: The report estimates food waste accounts for as much as 10 percent of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. (Check out these tips on reducing food waste in your own home.)

Controlling emissions from agriculture is also a food-security issue. Greenhouse gases from food production create a vicious cycle: As Earth gets hotter, farming gets more difficult in many places, which forces farmers to clear more land to grow food.

“Climate change, including increases in frequency and intensity of extremes, has adversely impacted food security and terrestrial ecosystems, as well as contributed to desertification and land degradation in many regions,” the report’s authors write.

If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, as they are doing today, it will exacerbate those challenges and eventually make it all but impossible to control global warming without creating serious food shortages.

The U.N. panel is the latest group of experts to grapple with a global conundrum: how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, deforestation and other land use without creating food shortages or displacing people whose livelihoods rely on practices that are unsustainable globally.

Scientists and economists have been studying the effects of our diets on the environment for years. There’s a growing consensus that a transition to a more plant-centered diet would help.

Currently, about 50% of the globe’s vegetated land is dedicated to agriculture — and about 30% of cropland is used to grow grain for animal feed. Given how much land it takes to grow food to feed livestock, meat production is a leading cause of deforestation.

A report released last month by the World Resources Institute finds that if current dietary patterns continue, an additional 593 million hectares — which is almost twice the size of India — would be needed to feed the projected 9.8 billion people (the anticipated population) by 2050.

Right now, agriculture generates an estimated 25% of annual greenhouse gas emissions, according to the WRI; that’s when you combine food production and the land-use changes associated with farming, such as clearing vegetation and plowing.

If current trends continue, but agricultural productivity does not increase beyond 2010 levels, the WRI report concludes that most of the globe’s remaining forests would need to be cleared to feed the world. And the globe would exceed the greenhouse gas emission targets set by the Paris climate agreement.

As we’ve reported: “The WRI estimates that if people in the U.S. and other heavy meat-eating countries reduced their consumption of beef (and other meat from ruminants) to about 1.5 burgers per person, per week, it would ‘nearly eliminate the need for additional agricultural expansion (and associated deforestation), even in a world with 10 billion people.’ ”

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Invasive Species Research

When invasive plants take root, native animals pay the price

Post author By jcoker
Post date August 8, 2019

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Header image: Jacob Barney and six graduate students conducted the first-ever comprehensive meta-analytic review examining the ecological impacts of invasive plants. Shown (l-r): Cody Dickinson, Ariel Heminger, Becky Fletcher, Gourav Sharma, Jacob Barney, Rachel Brooks, and Vasiliy Lakoba.

From VT News | August 7, 2019

Imagine a new breed of pirate not only able to sail the high seas, but to exploit nearly any mode of transportation without detection. And these raiders’ ambitions have little to do with amassing treasure and everything to do with hijacking ecosystems.

Today’s invasive species are as tenacious and resilient as the pirates of yesteryear, and when these plunderers set foot in new locations around the world, they know how to make themselves at home. As a result, home will never be the same for many native residents.

Virginia Tech researchers have discovered that when invasive plants take root, native animals pay the price.

Jacob Barney, associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, graduate researcher Becky Fletcher, and a team of five other doctoral students conducted the first-ever comprehensive meta-analytic review examining the ecological impacts of invasive plants by exploring how animals – indigenous and exotic – respond to these nonnative plants. Their study, which took place over a two-year period, is published in the journal Global Change Biology.

“Individual studies are system-specific, but we wanted to look for commonalities about how animals respond to invasive species. Our findings suggest that the impacts of invasive plants are much worse than we thought,” said Barney. “Exotic animals’ ability to survive on invasive plants coupled with the reduction of native animals is almost a worst-case scenario.”

The team’s findings underscore the negative impact of invasive plant species on native animal populations – populations that include worms, birds, and a host of mammals and other vertebrates – all of whom serve a multitude of important ecosystem functions across a range of trophic levels. Only mollusks and arthropods were unaffected.

“We had reason to believe that native and exotic animals may respond differently to invasive plants,” said Fletcher, a Kansas City native who is completing her doctorate in invasive plant ecology, and the paper’s lead author. “We hypothesized that exotic plants may increase the abundance of exotic animals while reducing the abundance of native animals.”

As it turns out, invasive plants had no impact on the abundance of exotic animals. The plants do not facilitate exotic animals, nor do they harm them. In essence, nonnative flora provides sufficient nourishment and other benefits to uphold, if not to enlarge, nonnative animal populations. On the other hand, native animals are diminishing as invasive plants gain a foothold in their habitats.

[/vc_column_text][vc_separator style=”shadow”][vc_single_image image=”31666″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]“Invasive species are one of the five drivers of global change. Just as human-induced phenomena, such as land use disturbance, climate change, and disease, are re-shaping our ecosystems, the same is true for invasive plants and animals,” said Barney, who is also a fellow in the Fralin Life Sciences Institute and an affiliate of the Global Change Center. “Our world will witness even more invasions over time. So, we must understand the body of research because it will drive conservation efforts.”

As a result of human activity, invasive plant and animal species now encircle the planet, colonizing terrestrial, aquatic, and marine environments, and suffusing every ocean and continent. In addition to their ability to displace native plants and animals, invasive species reduce wildlife habitat and alter natural processes. These environmental damages are often amplified by cascading impacts on other associated species and systems, including deforestation, storm water runoff, reduced groundwater, increased risk of wildfires, and the introduction of pathogens. Such sweeping losses also reap severe economic repercussions. While invasive insects cost the agricultural industry $13 billion in crops annually, collectively, invasive species – plants, animals, and diseases – cause an estimated $120 billion in damages each year in the United States alone.

A worst-case scenario feared by some researchers is invasion meltdown, which hypothesizes that once an exotic species – plant or animal – becomes abundant in an area, the ecosystem may change in such a way that facilitates the establishment of additional invaders. While Barney’s study was not designed to test invasion meltdown, the scenario is not so far-fetched.

“In the context of biodiversity, we are worried about the impact invasive species are having on diversity and ecosystems,” said Fletcher.

The researchers cite studies showing that native cardinals nesting in invasive Lonicera maackii shrubs fledged 20 percent fewer offspring. The team also discovered that animals in wet ecosystems were more impacted than in dry ecosystems. Rivers, already more nutrient-rich than terrestrial systems, are subject to frequent and intense disruptions such as flooding that can flow debris, seeds, and vegetation to new locales.

“As a result of climate change and land-use disturbance, species homogenization is the new normal,” said Barney, pointing out another challenge for researchers. “So, identifying nativity, the place a plant or animal has long existed, is becoming much harder. We need to document what is native versus exotic in every system as this will better inform our understanding of the effects of invasive plants.”

This information, coupled with better taxonomic identification of the animals impacted by invasive plants, could shed light on whether invasive species are the arbiters of global change or merely the victims.

“For 20 years, I’ve conducted experiments on individual species to learn about them,” said Barney. “This was the first time I’ve been able to do a large-scale study looking at big picture consequences. This approach was refreshing and allowed us to ask questions that have larger implications and look at larger trends. Working with six Ph.D. students was also a nice team effort. We coordinated well and approached this as a team of equals.”

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CONTACT:

Zeke Barlow

(540) 231-5417

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Accolades Interfaces of Global Change IGEP News Student Spotlight

Interfaces of Global Change IGEP welcomes 13 fellows for Fall 2019

Post author By jcoker
Post date August 7, 2019

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Thirteen new Ph.D. students will join the Interfaces of Global Change IGEP this fall. Their fields of study include freshwater ecology, soil biogeochemistry, environmental education, macroevolutionary dynamics, and more. We look forward to their positive contributions, engaging questions, and new ideas. Welcome!

Meet our newest fellows:

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Gaelle Blanvillain

Working with Dr. Bill Hopkins (Fish and Wildlife Conservation)

Research interests: How rapid environmental changes affect the physiology, behavior and health of endemic populations of reptiles and amphibians, and the consequences at the population level of such changes over the long term.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”31590″ img_size=”250×250″ alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

Nicholas Bone

Working with Dr. Josef Used (Biological Sciences)

Research interests: Trait adaptation, phylogenetic comparative methods, and macroevolutionary dynamics[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”31426″ img_size=”250×250″ alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

Jenn Brousseau

Working with Dr. Marc Stern (Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation)

Research interests: Human dimensions of wildlife; motivations behind environmental awareness and pro-environmental behavior; environmental education-specifically informal STEM learning; climate change adaptation[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”31446″ img_size=”250×250″ alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

Emma Bueren

Working with Dr. Lisa Belden (Biological Sciences)

Research interests: disease ecology[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”31460″ img_size=”250×250″ alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

Melissa Burt

Working with Dr. Susan Whitehead (Biological Sciences)

Research interests: Species interactions, community ecology, climate change, habitat fragmentation, functional traits[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”31141″ img_size=”250×250″ alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

Mariana Gelambi

Working with Dr. Susan Whitehead (Biological Sciences)

Research interests: evolutionary biology, zoology, chemical ecology, general bat biology[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”31451″ img_size=”250×250″ alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

Macy Kailing

Working with Dr. Kate Langwig (Biological Sciences)

Research interests: Infectious disease ecology, host-pathogen coevolution, wildlife and ecosystem health, heterogeneity in host susceptibility[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”31489″ img_size=”250×250″ alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

Sarah Kuchinsky

Working with Dr. Nisha Duggal (Biological Sciences)

Research interests: Infectious disease ecology, host-pathogen coevolution, wildlife and ecosystem health, heterogeneity in host susceptibility[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”31640″ img_size=”250×250″ alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

Abby Lewis

Working with Dr. Cayelan Carey (Biological Sciences)

Research interests: Freshwater ecology, nutrient cycling, and science communication[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”31510″ img_size=”250×250″ alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

Amanda Pennino

Working with Drs. Kevin McGuire and Brian Strahm (Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation)

Research interests: Soil biogeochemistry of forested ecosystems; geochemistry, watershed hydrology and forest ecology[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”31642″ img_size=”250×250″ alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

Sara Teemer

Working with Dr. Dana Hawley (Biological Sciences)

Research interests: Disease ecology, behavioral ecology, and microbiology[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”31509″ img_size=”250×250″ alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

Heather Wander

Working with Dr. Cayelan Carey (Biological Sciences)

Research interests: Limnology, plankton dynamics, food web interactions, climate change, water quality[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”31134″ img_size=”250×250″ alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]

Amber Wendler

Working with Dr. Ignacio Moore (Biological Sciences)

Research interests: Behavioral ecology, conservation biology, and ornithology[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row]