The EEB buzz

We'd love to hear from you! Please send your updated information to eeb-webinfo@umich.edu.

We're interested in where you're working, your Web site address, e-mail address, new publications, awards and honors. Even if you just have a good story to tell, we'd like to hear your latest adventures. We'll publish some of this information on our Web site and in upcoming newsletters.

You can also email us photos and we'll include some of them here.

To alumni we've heard from, thank you for sharing your good news and congratulations!

Jennifer Kostrzewski (B.S. Biology 2003) is the senior research assistant with Professor George Kling for the Land-Water Interactions component of the Arctic Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site at Toolik Field Station.

“We focus on the fluxes of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus), carbon, and energy between the land, water, and atmosphere. In the field we sample water from the streams, lakes, and soils in the surrounding areas and analyze them to determine their chemical composition. This year (2009) we have additional projects including studying the recovery and chemical/energy fluxes of one of the largest known tundra fires, studying the potential effects from thermokarsts (areas of melting permafrost and slumping/subsidence of the land) on the ecosystem, and investigating the microbial diversity and distribution in lakes and streams across the North Slope. All in all, it's a busy summer,” she wrote.
  
She received her master’s degree from the University of Arizona in hydrology where she studied the biogeochemical cycling and catchment hydrology in the Valles Caldera National Preserve, N.M.

See a recent EEB news item about Kostrzewski and her role in the northernmost tribute to Michael Jackson.

Photo: Kostrzewski touching an aufeis, which is different from a glacier because it melts completely over the summer.
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Cori Richards (Ph.D. EEB 2007) begins as an assistant professor in Tulane University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in fall 2009. “I'll be teaching the biology of amphibians and reptiles this term and continuing my research on amphibian host-pathogen interactions and speciation,” she writes. She will be working with postdoctoral fellow Matt Chatfield (Ph.D. EEB 2009). Tulane is in New Orleans, La. Richards' Lab Web site.
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There have been a flurry of articles about the River Bend Nature Center in Minnesota’s Faribault Daily News featuring Leah Penn Boris (M.S. EEB 2008), a River Bend intern naturalist who helps plan special events. Read them here:  Nature center’s annual fundraiser is Sunday, Winterfest offers family entertainment, An enchanted day: River Bend Nature Center preparing for annual Halloween event, Real Life: ‘Fun with a purpose,’  Lessons in nature: Kids keep learning during school break at explorers camp. Sounds like a lot of fun! Photo: Faribault Daily News.
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Wendy Grus (Ph.D. EEB 2008) began a new job as research administrator/science editor at Harvard University in June 2009. She works in the Cluzel Lab in Molecular and Cellular Biology and the Center for Systems Biology. They study biophysics and systems biology, and she assists with writing papers, grants, fellowships, and eventually a book. “I have only been at work three days, but I already love it!” she wrote.
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M. Jahi Chappell (Ph.D. EEB 2009) is a postdoctoral associate and Provost's Academic Diversity Fellow, Department of Science & Technology Studies, Cornell University. He was recently interviewed on the Canadian radio show “Deconstructing Dinner” about organic production, as part of their show on pesticides and an Ontarian province-wide ban on the non-essential use of 250 pesticides. The show titled “A Primer on Pesticide Propaganda II,” aired April 30, 2009.

“Deconstructing Dinner” covered the community food security conference Chappell organized a panel for in Vancouver in 2006. They are presently on some 40 Canadian stations and nine U.S. stations.

[Chappell notes that Jeremy Moghtader, a masters' student of Professor Ivette Perfecto at the time, now one of the farm managers of the Student Organic Farm at Michigan State University, was the second author of the study. Chappell erroneously omitted his name when discussing the study’s authors on the air.] Read more and listen to the interview. Chappell’s interview on the organic agriculture study begins around 31:49.  
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Carol Landry (Ph.D. EEB 2005) is an assistant professor of plant ecology in the Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology Department at The Ohio State University Mansfield campus. Dr. Landry is teaching introductory biology for non-majors with plans to teach additional plant biology courses (including one involving field work in the Bahamas) in the coming years. She will also be involved with a plant reproductive biology seminar for graduate students at the Columbus campus in 2009-2010.

Landry has continued her research of the reproductive ecology of white mangrove, and has been collaborating with a colleague at the University of Puerto Rico on a grant to investigate gene flow among white mangrove populations in the Neotropics. She has begun a long-term study on campus, which sits on over 600 acres of secondary forest, to investigate how changes in flowering phenology of early spring flowers in central Ohio (due to climate change) might affect interactions between this plant community and its pollinators.

Tim Connallon (Ph.D. EEB 2009) will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University in the lab of Andy Clark, a professor of population genetics, in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics.
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Diego Ruiz Moreno (Ph.D. EEB 2009) will begin a postdoctoral fellowship in July 2009 in the EEB department at Cornell University. Ruiz Moreno will be developing spatial and descriptive models of disease dynamics based on current datasets available for three parallel systems: sea corals, amphibian populations, and mosquito borne-diseases. He will collaborate with climate specialists and biologists to create a climate-based forecasting tool for corals and work with other members of Cornell's ecology and evolution of infectious disease community including Drs. Drew Harvell, Kelly Zamudio and Laura Harrington.

The position is primarily funded by a new award from the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future for research on climate effect on disease dynamics in the three systems. Additional funding is provided by an award from the Global Environmental Fund for Coral Reef Sustainability.
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Matt Chatfield (Ph.D. EEB 2009) begins his postdoctoral fellowship this summer in the lab of Cori Richards, a U-M EEB alumnus and assistant professor (starting fall 2009) in the EEB department at Tulane University, New Orleans. He’ll be looking at the role of sexual selection in driving speciation in poison dart frogs in Panama and/or examining the susceptibility of southeastern frogs to the pathogenic chytrid fungus, which is responsible for mass die-offs in many amphibian species.
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Zach Miller (Ph.D. EEB 2009) begins a postdoctoral fellowship in mid-April at Montana State University to research the interactions among plant viruses, a tiny mite-vector, weed species and wheat. He will be working with Drs. Fabian Menalled and Mary Burrows. Miller is excited to be back in the mountains and he reports that his twin daughters are making many new friends. Happy trails!
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Richard Howard (Ph.D. Zoology 1977), professor of biological sciences in the Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University has won The 2008 J. Alfred and Martha Chiscon Undergraduate Teaching Award, his department’s highest teaching award. It recognizes a faculty member who demonstrates excellence in teaching and dedication to students. Howard has been at Purdue since 1979. His research interests are evolutionary ecology and behavior.

Elen Oneal (Ph.D. EEB 2008) has accepted and started a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University. She will be working with Dr. John Willis on the evolutionary genetics of adaptation in natural populations.
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A featured article on the Louisiana State University Web site about Prosanta Chakrabarty (Ph.D. EEB 2006) begins, “To most people, the idea of digging around in a pile of discarded fish seems like a bizarre new form of torture. But Prosanta Chakrabarty, LSU Museum of Natural Science’s curator of fishes, sees it as a great opportunity to unearth otherwise difficult-to-collect specimens – and the chance to make LSU’s deep ocean fish collection one of the biggest and best in the business.” Read the full article. See another article from the Baton Rouge Advocate.
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Amy Arnett (B.S. Biology 1991), associate professor of ecology, Unity College, Unity, Maine, has been awarded the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Award. The honor is bestowed on some of the most accomplished faculty and researchers in the world. The program’s purpose is to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries. Read more on Unity College's Web site.

"I remember fondly my days at Michigan," Dr. Arnett wrote. "I loved hanging out in the Diag and spending time in the Mammalogy Department helping to sort through skeletons. My experience at Michigan opened my eyes to the possibilities of having a career studying ecology and evolution."
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Krista McGuire (Ph.D. EEB 2007) is at the University of California, Irvine for her postdoctoral fellowship. Working with Professor Kathleen Treseder, she will investigate plant and fungal diversity relationships in both the tropical rain forest and the boreal forest. Forest conversion is a major threat to plant diversity in these regions. Understanding the impacts of plant diversity loss on fungi, which play a major role in providing nutrients to plants, is important for managing and restoring these systems.
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Mary Ann Evans (Ph.D. EEB 2006) is working her postdoctoral fellowship at Michigan State University’s Kellogg Biological Station with field work throughout lower Michigan.

Her research expands on the topic of her dissertation, controls on phytoplankton photosynthesis, into areas of phytoplankton community ecology. She will investigate the controls on abundance of Microcystis, a toxin producing cyanobacteria known to cause harmful algal blooms. After testing, the model of Microcystis abundance she and her team develop, will be used to explore how future climate change and the continued spread of invasive zebra mussels will impact the occurrence of Microcystis-caused harmful algal blooms.
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Heather Lerner (Ph.D. EEB 2007) successfully completed her doctoral degree in August 2007. She will began her postdoctoral research fellowship in fall 2007 at the Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
 
Lerner will be working on a new project with Drs. Helen James and Rob Fleischer establishing molecular and morphological phylogenies of Hawaiian songbirds including the Hawaiian honeycreepers, honeyeaters, crows and thrushes. The adaptive radiation of the Hawaiian honeycreepers includes 56 species of which 23 are known only from subfossil bones. “For the extinct and endangered species of songbirds, I will be extracting DNA for sequencing from subfossil bones and other museum specimens using ancient DNA techniques,” Lerner said.
Photo (right): Carla H. Kishinami, Collection Manager, vertebrates, Honolulu

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Xiaoxia Wang’s (Ph.D. EEB 2007) thesis “Molecular evolution in primates” received an honorable mention in the 2007 Distinguished Dissertation Award competition. Out of 700 dissertations produced at U-M last year, 51 were nominated for this award. Ultimately, eight awards and eight honorable mentions were conferred. Wang is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Diego. Her advisor was Professor George Zhang.
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Ashley P.G. Dowling, (Ph.D. EEB 2005) became an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas in the Department of Entomology in January 2008. He spent the last two-and-a-half years as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Kentucky. He will teach general entomology each fall (class for juniors, seniors and grad students) and every couple years in the spring will teach a graduate course in systematics. He is working on a book on parasitic mites that is expected to be published in mid-2009.  Dowling was recently elected president of the Acarological Society of America for 2009. He was named associate editor for the Journal of Parasitology.

“The last few months have been very good to me,” writes Dowling. He has two potential Ph.D. students starting in January 2009. One will work on the systematic and historical ecology of a diverse group of mites and the other is a Costa Rican doctor of veterinary medicine who wants to study the role of mites (excluding ticks) as vectors of disease among bats and other small mammals.

“Annie and I have both missed Ann Arbor since leaving in 2005, but we find Fayetteville to be a similar and suitable (and smaller) replacement and think we will be very happy here with the three cats and one really crazy Irish terrier.”

Photo: Dowling with penguins on a trip to South Africa. "They really are silly little creatures," he writes.
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Ondrej Podlaha (Ph.D. EEB 2007) is a postdoctoral researcher in the Evolutionary Developmental Biology Department at Yale University. He is working in Antonia Monteiro's lab. His research specifically focuses on the evolution of morphological novelties, namely the molecular basis of color pattern formation--such as eyespots--on butterfly wings.

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