University of Michigan
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

On July 1, 2001, the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology became an independent department in the College of LSA so today marks our 10th anniversary. 

“It has been a tremendously exciting and productive ten years,” said Professor Deborah Goldberg, chair of EEB. During the last 10 years, the department has renewed its faculty (over half of the current faculty were hired during this period), developed a full funding package for graduate students, completely renovated the way we teach introductory biology, started a popular new concentration in EEB, and developed a number of new programs, such as the Frontier’s Masters Program and the Michigan Biology Academy Scholars. “Many of us were initially reluctant to split the Department of Biology into EEB and MCDB because we viewed biology as a very integrated discipline, but we have ended up making huge strides in the disciplines of ecology and evolution, while also retaining a strongly integrated undergraduate program in biology, in cooperation with MCDB,”  said Goldberg.

EEB graduate student Huateng Huang will receive the Donald W. Tinkle Scholarship from U-M Museum of Zoology. This $5,000 award is a special recognition of her research excellence. Huang’s research investigates the underlying genetic mechanism of speciation.  

“Investigating the genetic divergence of neutral loci among species gives many insights about how species diverged from each other and the evolutionary driving forces behind it,” she said. “However, gene trees constructed from different loci often have different patterns, especially in recently diverged species. Variations between loci on a genome and between individuals in a population need to be considered to obtain a reliable estimation of species history. How to bridge the traditional population genetic approach with the approaches of molecular phylogeny is a field that requires further investigation. My research mainly involves testing how two stochastic processes -- mutation and lineage sorting -- affect our ability to recoverthe history of closely related species with both simulated and empirical data."

The scholarship was endowed by the family and friends of Tinkle, former curator of herpetology and director of the Museum of Zoology.

Undergraduate David Chapel has received the inaugural Christine Psujek Memorial Award. Chapel’s honor thesis, “Development of a High-Throughput Screen for Small Molecule Inhibitors of Murine Norovirus Attachment,” sponsored by Dr. Christiane Wobus of the U-M Medical School, was judged to be the best thesis for this year's Program in Biology graduating class from any concentration.

Chapel graduated in April 2011 in microbiology and Germanic Languages and Literatures in the LSA Honors Program. He graduated with Highest Honors in microbiology and Highest Distinction overall. His lab mentors were Dr. Michael Elftman, Dr. Stefan Taube, and Jeffrey W. Perry.

Chapel, who grew up on a farm in Parma, Mich. plans a career as a country doctor. “Becoming a doctor will allow me to use my interest in science as a tool for social justice,” Chapel said. “I can learn skills to minister to the most basic human needs. Chapel would like to become a family physician focusing on preventative care. He will work on the farm this summer before starting medical school in the fall. We can truly say that Chapel is outstanding in his field in more ways than one.

In August, Chapel moves to Manhattan to study at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He received a full-tuition scholarship for four years. “At Columbia, I'll be taking part in the special Columbia-Bassett program, which seeks to train physicians who will promote improvements in health care administration and delivery standards in the interest of improving health care delivery while containing costs.”

“I think I am going into medicine at a very exciting time,’’ he says. “I hope by the time I start practicing more people will have access to health care.”

The Program in Biology established the Christine Psujek Memorial Undergraduate Award in her memory. The award of $500 is presented annually to the graduating senior with the highest ranked honors thesis in any of the biology concentrations.

Photo by Austin Thomason, U-M Photo Services

Twenty rising eighth-grade students from the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians spent last week at Camp KinoMaage, hosted by the U-M Biological Station.

The students collaborated with U-M faculty, students and expert staff, and elders of the Sault Tribe to examine natural phenomena, consider the ways in which ancient and modern knowledge converge, and acquire conversational experience in the Ojibwe language.

KinoMaage means “to share teachings” in Anishshinaabe, the language of the Three Fires People — the Ojibwe/Chippewa, Odawa and Potawatomi. And that is precisely what the students did.

On boats, above ground and beneath, along the lakeshore, in gorges and around campfires, in the laboratory and on an archeological dig, they were introduced to the study of ecosystems, hydrology, ethnobotany, biofuel and solar cells. They considered the plight of the endangered sparrow-sized shore bird called the piping plover (“psidjiizhkwenh” in Anishshinaabe), and discussed real-world issues like the ethics of science and the ways that societal needs and cost affect scientific discovery.

EEB Ph.D. student Tory Hendry has won the Edwin H. Edwards Scholarship in Biology. She is comparing the genomes of two symbiotic luminous bacteria that live in light organs of their fish hosts, causing them to glow.

“My previous work with the genome of one symbiont has shown that unlike other luminous symbionts, flashlight fish symbionts are obligately dependent on their hosts for growth,” Hendry said. “I am sequencing the genome of another species of symbiont to see how similar the two are. I'll be comparing gene content, nucleotide substitution rate and the affect of genetic drift between the two genomes to determine what evolutionary processes act in these interesting symbionts. I will be testing for similarities between these luminous symbionts and other groups of obligate symbionts.”

The scholarship is for graduate students studying biology. The recipient is selected based on the novelty and scholarship of the proposed research; the clarity, merit, and appropriate scope and feasibility of the research plan; progress in the program including prior research results; and a letter of recommendation.

The award is for the 2011 – 2012 academic year, including one semester of stipend, tuition at the candidate level, and GradCare benefits.

You can read about U-M EEB graduate students' summer research experiences from around the world on the new EEBlog. These students are blogging from the following locations: Cindy Bick, the London Zoological Society; Rachel Cable, Gondar, Ethiopia; John Guittar, Yasuni Scientific Research Station, Ecuador; Lucy Tran, Kibale National Park, Uganda. Qixin He will blog from Africa this fall. Feel free to leave comments and/or follow the blog. We’d love to hear from you. If you are an U-M EEB student, we would also like to have more bloggers, even if you’re staying in Ann Arbor for the summer.

The EEBlog was in the U-M Record Update June 22, 2011, and is currently on the U-M Gateway.

John S. Sparks, U-M EEB Ph.D. alumnus (2001) is blogging from Madagascar for the New York Times in their Scientist at Work, Notes from the Field blog. Sparks, curator of ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History, is studying cave fish along with his colleague, Christopher Braun. Sparks was a student of Professor Bill Fink's at the Museum of Zoology.

EEB Ph.D. students John Marino and Mike Sheehan are the 2011 recipients of the Edwin S. George Reserve Scholarship to enhance their research at the George Reserve. 

Marino is examining the distributions of parasites among amphibian populations across a landscape of ponds. He is interested in the interactive effects of parasites and predators on amphibians.

Sheehan is studying cognitive development in wasps. They each received $2,700.

2010 recipients of the ESGR Scholarships were Marino, Sheehan, and Leiling Tao. Tao studies how resource imbalance affects species interactions under global environmental change.

Incoming EEB Ph.D. students Katherine Crocker, Serge Farinas and Senay Yitbarek have been awarded the Rackham Merit Fellowship, one of the largest and most prestigious awards for incoming students. The fellowship funds five years of their doctoral work.

The students will take part in a two-month 2011 Merit Fellow Summer Institute to help them prepare for their doctoral studies.

During the summer, Crocker will work in the lab of Professor Liz Tibbetts on chemical communication in Hymenoptera (wasps). In general, Crocker’s doctoral research will involve behavioral ecology research.

Farinas will continue his master’s thesis work this summer looking at how changing temperature and precipitation along a climate grid influence alpine plant community chemistry (nutrient concentrations and ratios) with Professors Deborah Goldberg and Knute Nadelhoffer. Farinas’ doctoral work will expand on his master’s research. “Understanding changes to plant chemistry is vital as these differences can lead to further changes in ecosystem function via plant-soil feedbacks and changes to associated microbial and animal communities,” said Farinas.

Using computer simulations, Yitbarek will investigate how competitive species interactions can give rise to the formation of spatial patterns in ecological systems with Professor John Vandermeer this summer. Yitbarek said, “this exciting research will provide a new framework from which to tackle the age old question of species coexistence by using tools from game-theory, dynamical systems, and graph theory. Understanding how species coexist within a spatial framework will contribute to the age old question of how biodiversity is maintained,” said Yitbarek.

The Rackham Merit Fellowship Program helps sustain the academic excellence and inclusiveness of the Michigan graduate community, one that embraces students with diverse experiences and goals, and who come from many educational, cultural, geographic, and familial backgrounds. The RMFP is competitive and recognizes entering students who have outstanding academic qualifications, show exceptional potential for scholarly success in their graduate program, and demonstrate promise for contributing to wider academic, professional, or civic communities. The doctoral fellowship provides up to a five-year funding package in partnership with the graduate program that includes tuition, required fees, stipend, health and dental coverage, during each fall and winter term, with select summer stipend and benefits.

EEB postdoctoral fellow Hayley Lanier was awarded a position as a postdoctoral scholar in the FIRST IV project, an NSF funded workshop at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). The goal is to improve the quality of undergraduate education in science. The award covers travel and lodging to participate in two workshops over the next two years. Lanier will help teach undergraduate science courses during each of the next two years at U-M to practice and implement what she learns at the workshops.

Next year, Lanier will teach several class meetings that focus on a conceptual area of evolution in her advisor, Lacey Knowles’ course, EEB 390: Evolution.