February 2013

Our grads rock: three first years awarded coveted NSF fellowships

Jeff Shi studies the evolutionary history of bats. Benjamin Miller investigates carbon dioxide and methane dynamics throughout freshwater lakes and hydropower complexes. Celia Miller researches the evolution of ecological niches using green algae. These three first year students have each been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

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Research feature: climate warming unlikely to wipe out ancient Amazon trees

A new genetic analysis has revealed that many Amazon tree species are likely to survive human-caused climate warming in the coming century, contrary to previous findings that temperature increases would cause them to die out.

However, the authors of the new study warn that extreme drought and forest fires will impact Amazonia as temperatures rise, and the over-exploitation of the region's resources continues to be a major threat to its future.

The study by evolutionary biologist Christopher Dick and his colleagues demonstrates the surprising age of some Amazonian tree species – more than 8 million years.

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Alumni profile: Joseph works to improve Native Americans' dental health in California

Aley Joseph (M.S. EEB 2010, M.P.H. Epidemiology 2011) was hired as an epidemiologist in January 2012 for the California Indian Health Board, a health research and consulting company that was founded by and serves rural Native American tribes in California. “I am coordinating an NIH-funded dental health intervention study right now. It has been great so far," said Joseph.

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EEB in first round of MCubed

Three EEB professors and their colleagues were selected for the first round of MCubed, a first-of-its-kind, real-time research funding initiative at U-M that puts $15 million into the hands of professors to jump start new projects they believe in.

Two projects involving EEB faculty have been funded as one of 50 pilots, one on algal fuel and biodiversity and the other on optimizing resource allocation across multiple interventions for cost-effective malaria prevention and control.

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Video: Gross anatomy lesson at UMMZ

This time-lapse video from the U-M Museum of Zoology takes the bat species Artibeus jamacanensis from specimen to display. The process might be a little stomach-churning, but then again, good science isn’t always mess-free.

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From humble beginnings: redesigned ADW reaches millions worldwide

Professor Philip Myers was preparing to teach a new animal diversity course for nonmajors, but he couldn't find a textbook that contained the right mix: detailed information about individual species, lots of photos, and material about ecology and conservation.

So Myers and a few U-M colleagues created a new learning tool called the Animal Diversity Web, a searchable database and multimedia encyclopedia of animal natural history that was launched on the fledgling World Wide Web in 1995.

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