University of Michigan
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

The Gallery Project, UMWELT (Subjective World) runs through October 30, 2011 at 215 South Fourth Ave., Ann Arbor. The multimedia exhibit features over 20 local, regional, and national artists and scientists who explore the unique sensory worlds of animals, including several from the University of Michigan Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Contributors affiliated with EEB include: Alison Davis-Rabosky, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, who joins EEB in September 2012; Evan Economo, Michigan Fellow; Professor Phil Gingerich; Michael Sheehan, graduate student and Professor Elizabeth Tibbetts.

Image by Sheehan

Did you know that mites are older than dinosaurs by about 200 million years? Mites are found almost everywhere on earth, from the highest mountains, deepest oceans, hot, wet tropical forests, to cold, dry valleys of Antarctica. You will learn this and much more from a new exhibit at the Museum of Natural History called “The Invisible World of Mites,” which highlights the research of Professor Barry OConnor, renowned acarologist.

In the rotunda as visitors enter the museum, they will see a large informational panel with photos and a plethora of mite information as well as an interactive display that explores mite diversity and tests their knowledge.

Categories covered include: what are mites? Who studies mites? Weird lifestyles, hitchin’ a ride, and sharing your bed (just what you always wanted to know).

A few more interesting facts: there are mites that move like earthworms through dirt, some mites parasitize other parasites, and mites are herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. Mites belong to one of the most diverse groups of arthropods, a very large group of creatures that have hard exoskeletons or outer shells instead of backbones. Arthropods include insects, spiders and lobsters, to name a few. OConnor is a curator of insects and arachnids in the Insect Division in the U-M Museum of Zoology.

According to the exhibit, “When you are at home, sitting on your sofa, lying in your bed, even if nobody else is around, you are never alone. There are thousands, even millions of dust mites there with you.” Now there’s a thought to leave you with. Learn more through April 2012 (the exhibit has been extended since the printing of the banners).

As seen in the University Record.

A warm EEB welcome to Yonah Drazen, desktop support specialist. Drazen worked at the University of Wisconsin – Madison for five years as an IT support specialist in the Division of Information Technology’s Help Desk.  At the same time, he obtained his bachelor of arts and master’s degrees in social work.  After graduation, Drazen spent nearly two years as a case worker for Integrated Family Services in Milwaukee. Most recently, he worked as a temporary employee with the University of Michigan’s LSA Computer Support Group at the Help Desk, as well as in the Department of Anthropology.

Drazen began working in EEB in August, working Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. – 12 p.m.  He is responsible for providing computer deployment, maintenance and support.

“While I'm here at EEB, I'm looking forward to helping people in the department make their computers work for them,” Drazen said. “In my free time, I enjoy experimenting in the kitchen and playing darts, though I'm not yet terribly good at either.”

EEB graduate student Michael Sheehan won best student paper from the Animal Behavior Society at the first joint meeting of ABS and the International Ethological Congress in Bloomington, Ind. in late July 2011.

According to the ABS newsletter, The Warder Clyde Allee Symposium for best student paper is always a highlight of the conference. This year nine finalists were selected from 19 students who applied to participate. All of the presentations were of exceptionally high quality. After considerable discussion, the judges awarded this year's $1,000 prize to Sheehan for his paper entitled "Individual recognition in Polistes fuscatus wasps: correlated evolution of receiver cognition and sender phenotypes."

Sheehan discussed the evolution of color patterns used for recognition in wasps, particularly their unique facial patterns, and the evolution of learning abilities associated with recognition at the “Behavior 2011” meeting.

Library cards for fish? Not exactly, but scientists worldwide can check out fish and tissue samples from the U-M Museum of Zoology. Listen in as Professor and Curator Bill Fink leads a guided tour through the Museum of Zoology’s fish collection as heard Sept. 14, 2011 on Michigan Radio’s “The Environment Report.”

Currently on the LSA home page.

ED-QUE²ST is a new Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program especially for first and second year college students from backgrounds underrepresented in ecology and evolutionary biology. Professors Catherine Badgley and John Vandermeer, and Jo Kurdziel, lecturer and research scientist, are co-principal investigators of the program that brought students from across the country to the University of Michigan campus this summer.

“The students thrived on the individual attention that they received in each research project and exceeded our expectations for what they accomplished over the summer,” said Badgley.

Following are the 2011 ED-QUE²ST students, their academic affiliations, what they studied and who their mentors were:

Ruth Alabi, South Carolina State University, evaluated new epidemiological models that incorporated seasonal dynamics of infection of cholera in Bengal and polio in Africa with Professor Aaron King and Micaela Martinez-Baker, graduate student.

Gisela Alvarez, Palm Beach State College, studied seasonality in feeding habits of zebra and wildebeast from Kenya with Badgley and graduate student Tara Smiley, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Alvarez studied carbon and oxygen isotopes over the annual cycle in the animal’s teeth to evaluate seasonal variation in diet and drinking water.  

Sterling Atkins, Morehouse University, researched exotic earthworm biodiversity under varying amounts of leaf litter, and associated effects on soil organic matter in north temperate forests with Professor Knute Nadelhoffer, James LeMoine, research laboratory specialist, and graduate student Jasmine Crumsey at the U-M Biological Station.

Ravi Shah, University of Michigan, documented dental microwear (microscopic pits and scratches) on the enamel of fossil proboscideans, elephant relatives, from Pakistan with Badgley and research scientist Bill Sanders in the Museum of Paleontology.

Kate Uckele, University of Michigan, studied the interaction between insects and plant hosts by analyzing DNA from insects collected from Barro Colorado Island, Panama. She also created interaction networks for insect orders and their host plants as documented in the field with graduate student, Brian Sedio.

Monica Valdez, University of Toledo, compared native and invasive species of vines under different soil conditions, and compared the rooting ability of natives to non-natives to see if invasive species have faster rooting ability with Professor Robyn Burnham

Yashira Valentin, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, researched coarse woody debris stocks and decomposition rates in a north temperate forest with Crumsey, Nadelhoffer, and Christopher Vogel, research scientist, at the U-M Biological Station. Valentin documented decay of coarse woody debris in experimental and control sites and measured respiration rates in woody debris to estimate CO₂ release.

Additionally, Alvarez and Valentin attended the Ecological Society of America annual meeting in Austin, Texas, with faculty and students from the department and became involved in the SEEDS program (Strategies for Ecology Education, Diversity and Sustainability). They had a great time at their first professional meeting and found the experience very rewarding, according to Vandermeer. Alvarez, who is originally from Puerto Rico, attended every session on amphibians she could find and got really excited to find out more about chytridiomycosis, the infectious disease that has led to a global decline in amphibian populations.

Photo from left to right Ravi Shah, Yashira Valentin, Ruth Alabi, Kate Uckele, Gisela Alvarez, Sterling Atkins.

Read a faculty profile on Professor and Chair Deborah Goldberg in this week’s University Record and learn something new!

The article begins, “Growing up on Long Island, N.Y., Deborah Goldberg never thought of becoming a scientist. As a freshman at Barnard College, she took a biology course just to fulfill a science requirement and later a course on the natural history of New York.” Read about her field work, how she nearly doubled the number of women on the faculty of EEB in 10 years and created programs to encourage young scientists and much more.

The Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA) presented Professor John Vandermeer with an honorary plaque at their Third International Congress meeting, August 2011, in Oaxtepec, Mexico.

The plaque, inscribed in Spanish translates, in part, as “In recognition of decades of work on behalf of Latin American agriculture and for his valuable contributions to the development of agroecology.”

Miguel A. Altieri, SOCLA president, presented the first five awards and then when he announced that the last award goes to a person who has been really important in theoretical ecology, Vandermeer said he started looking around wondering who else besides him is in theoretical ecology.

“It’s a field that doesn’t have a lot of theoreticians,” he said. “They announced my name and I was shocked. I was totally speechless,” in front of an audience of about 800 people, something that he said happens very infrequently.

“I was really surprised to get this award and I feel it was quite an honor to be recognized by this society, which promotes the development of sustainable agricultural systems based on ecological principles,” said Vandermeer.

“This is an incredible honor for John, mainly because it comes from the Latin American Scientific Society for Agroecology,” said Professor Ivette Perfecto, School of Natural Resources and Environment, who is Vandermeer’s partner in life and research. “It recognizes his more than 30 years of contribution to agroecology in Latin America. The award also is important because it recognizes the importance of theoretical work within the field of agroecology.”

They spent the summer researching at the U-M Biological Station and then on the evening of August 17, 2011, the incoming Frontiers master’s student cohort presented their results.

"It was a fantastic symposium,” said Professor Mark Hunter, director of the Frontiers Program. “Our Frontiers students spoke on a diversity of topics in evolution and ecology to a broad audience of UMBS faculty, staff and students. It was fascinating to hear the results of a busy summer of research."

The new Frontiers students are: Marcella Baiz (Grand Valley State University), Alexandria Moore (University of Michigan), Beatriz Otero-Jimenez (University of Puerto Rico - Rio Piedras), and Lillian Smith (Oakwood University).

Baiz, whose research interests are behavioral ecology, phylogenetics, and biogeography, studied optimal foraging behavior in antlions.  She tested models designed to describe how antlions should handle variation in diet quality.

Moore, who is interested in conservation ecology and biodiversity, demonstrated that insect herbivores can impose fitness costs on their hosts. Specifically, milkweed insects can cause reductions in fruit set in milkweed plants.

Otero Jimenez’s research interests include ecosystem ecology, biodiversity and agriculture and she managed to establish a link between plant and animal succession. Changes in vegetation at UMBS are driving change in insect communities.

Smith, whose research interests are plant ecology, tropical ecology and biodiversity, spent the summer trying to establish if pitcher plants change color to balance their needs for carbon and nitrogen.

Pictured left to right: Lillian Smith, Beatriz Otero Jimenez, Alex Moore, Marcella Baiz.

Professor Tim James was awarded the C.J. Alexopoulos Prize at the annual Mycological Society of America meeting held in Fairbanks, Alaska in August.  

Awarded annually to an outstanding early career mycologist, nominees are evaluated primarily on the quality, originality and quantity of their published work. The peer-nominated award goes to the most promising young researcher in the MSA. “It's definitely the most flattering honor I've received,” said James.

C. J. Alexopoulos was a prominent mycologist who studied slime molds and authored the most widely used introductory mycology text. 

James was born in Decatur, Ga. in 1973. His heritage is half Korean and half European American. He attended the University of Georgia, where he received his bachelor’s of science in botany. There, he worked as a lab assistant in Jim Hamrick’s lab and became enthralled with the use of molecular markers to study the evolution of populations. Through the influence of David Porter and the mycology class of Charles Mims, he fell in love with fungi and has been researching them ever since. He completed a Ph.D. in Rytas Vilgalys’ lab at Duke University, working on mating genes and population genetics in mushrooms and stayed on to work on the Assembling the Fungal Tree of Life (AFToL) project.

Ten thousand gels later, he is assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and curator of fungi at the University of Michigan Herbarium, where he hopes to carry on the deep mycological tradition at the institution. Mostly working on the root and tips of the fungal tree of life (chytrids and mushrooms), he has yet to solve the murder mystery of the origin of amphibian chytridiomycosis but pledges to pursue this as long as he is able.