University of Michigan
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

EEB graduate students Jen-Pan Huang and Tristan McKnight received Rosemary Grant Graduate Student Research Awards from The Society for the Study of Evolution. These awards assist students in the first two years of their Ph.D programs by enabling them to collect preliminary data or to enhance the scope of their research beyond current funding limits by visiting additional field sites, or working at other labs, for example. Professor Lacey Knowles is their advisor.

Huang is studying the Hercules Beetle to test the predominance of two competing mechanisms during population subdivision. Hercules Beetles have traits with different phenotypes that are governed by genetics and induced by environmental differences. By comparing phenotypic differences in these traits across multiple closely related populations/subspecies, Huang will estimate the speed and magnitude of evolutionary changes in non-plastic and plastic components of these traits.

McKnight is exploring dynamics of parallel evolution in the ecology and morphology in a pair of robber fly lineages using a combination of phylogenetic and ecological techniques. Robber flies (an understudied group of insects) are an interesting new system for exploring the creation of local communities from regional species pools and uncovering tradeoffs involved in adaptive radiations, according to McKnight.

EEB graduate student Rachel Cable participated in The Second Annual Spelling Bee for Honest Cheaters, Dirty Rotten Spellers, and Mustachioed Heroes in Ypsilanti recently to raise funds for 826michigan.

826michigan is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students aged 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

Cable teamed up with doctoral students Dan Gershman and Ahmed Tawfik from U-M’s Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences. They wore space costumes from a previous series of science writing workshops that Gershman and Kristen Mihalka (U-M AOSS) created and implemented at 826. The spelling bee team, The James Webb Space Spelloscope, raised $595.

The spelling bee was hosted by poet Raymond McDaniel and featured Ypsilanti Mayor Paul Schreiber and author Steve Amick.

“It was a great event that raised over $10,000,” said EEB graduate student Susan Cheng. “The proceeds will be used to support the organization's free programs for students, which include tutoring, writing workshops, and other in-school programs. It wasn't your typical spelling bee, the words were really hard! Rachel and Dan had to spell mulct and foumart.”

Cheng recently volunteered at a writing workshop called Robot PI:The Case of the Forgetful Firefighter at 826michigan where she played a character the students interviewed to figure out who the guilty party was. EEB graduate student Alison Gould has participated in a writing workshop helping students write stories. Cable, Cheng and Gould plan to stay involved with the organization.

As of May 1, 2012 Professor Mark Hunter has handed over the director’s reins for the Frontiers Master’s Program to Professor Tom Duda for a five-year term.

“We've just recruited our fifth cohort of students for a total of 21 students overall,” said Hunter, who was the director for the first five years of the program. “Graduating Frontiers students have joined doctoral programs at institutions across the U.S., including Harvard, Berkeley, UCLA, Minnesota and University of Michigan, among others.

"The program was conceived as a STEP project within the university's ADVANCE program,” he said. STEP stands for Strategies Toward Excellent Practices. “Deborah Goldberg, John Vandermeer and Beverly Rathcke were the ones who developed the idea for Frontiers and I was lucky enough to inherit the fruits of their efforts. And the support that we've had from Rackham – from Abby Stewart and from Janet Weis – has been spectacular. The Frontiers Program has been the result of a lot of work by many people."

"It's been a real privilege to work with Frontiers students during the past five years. They have increased the strength and the diversity of our graduate program and I have learned a lot from them.  It's reassuring to know that the program will in great hands with Tom Duda as director. Tom has put in a lot of work over the past few months to learn about Frontiers. He has some great ideas for leading the program into the future."

“As the founding director, Mark Hunter has done an absolute stellar job establishing the Frontiers programs with comprehensive mentoring and rigorous standards,” said EEB Professor and Chair Deborah Goldberg.  “I am delighted that Tom has agreed to be the next director and will be bringing his talents and creativity to the program.”

Since Frontiers’ inception in 2008, four EEB Frontiers Master’s Program students have moved on to EEB’s doctoral program: Cindy Bick, Serge Farinas, Theresa Wei Ying Ong, and Senay Yitbarek.

Bick (2010 Frontiers cohort) is investigating questions pertaining to differential survival in a Pacific Island endemic species, terrestrial snails,with her advisor, Professor Diarmaid Ó Foighil. “In recent decades, the rich endemic tree snail fauna of the Society Islands (French Polynesia) has been almost completely extirpated by an introduced predator,” Bick said. “However, two snail species have differentially survived in the valleys of Tahiti and the goal of my thesis is to determine what factor(s) underlay this differential survival.

“I chose UM’s EEB program because of its outstanding depth in both ecology and evolutionary biology,” she said. “The faculty here is engaged in diverse and exciting research topics ranging from the origins of species to global climate change. Students get to be part of this exciting research. Fortunately, I found an advisor who worked on a research topic that I am highly interested in. The faculty and administration here are also very committed to fostering a supportive environment for its students.

“My undergraduate degrees were not in ecology or evolutionary biology and I was severely limited in the academic background that it took to succeed in an EEB graduate program. In the past two years as a Frontiers master’s student, I have been doing a lot of catching up. I have been exposed to a wide range of research topics as well as approaches in ecology and evolutionary biology. This exposure has enabled me to ‘fine tune’ my research interests and provide me with a foundation and competitive advantage to continue on to a nationally prominent Ph.D. program. This program also prepared me to navigate the mental and academic challenges of being a graduate student. Whenever I needed advice, there was always tremendous support from the EEB faculty and from diversity programs throughout the university.”

"Cindy has excelled in our Frontiers Master's Program and has proven to be a highly determined and intrepid researcher," said Ó Foighil. "I'm really pleased that she has picked us over Yale for her Ph.D. Given her interests in conservation biology,  Cindy is well positioned to make a big impact  (socially as well as scientifically) as a Polynesian woman scientist working in Oceania. We need to train talented young scientists just like her if we are to have any realistic chance of preserving representative fractions of these fragile island biotas."

Bick, who joins the Ph.D. program in the fall of 2012, was nominated for and received a Rackham Merit Fellowship, one of the largest and most prestigious awards for incoming students. The RMF 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. Farinas and Yitbarek are also Rackham Merits Fellows.

Regarding his decision to join EEB’s doctoral program, Farinas (2009 Frontiers cohort) said, “For me, it was a natural choice as I realized I had grown into a community here. There are so many great ecologists and the caliber of the work they do is amazing. Every day is a challenge. I have advanced greatly in knowledge and understanding since being here. Not only that, but I think the various other intellectual and social engagements that come along with this environment have caused me to grow quite a lot as a person.

“I feel the master's program was a solid preparation. Most of the time I felt like I was being treated like a Ph.D. student anyway. The expectations were quite high, but the mentorship was always there as a foundation.”

Regarding the experience of moving from Frontiers to the Ph.D. program, he said, “In all honesty, I don't feel like much has changed. Well, there's the additional stress of prelims of course, but the basic course is the same. I am trying to become the best and most well-rounded ecologist I can be. What I really look forward to, though, is more time to focus on deeper questions and building research that can answer them.”

Farinas will continue to study changing climate effects on plant communities. This summer he will focus more on questions of changes in nitrogen dynamics and the relationship to patterns of diversity. His advisor is Professor Deborah Goldberg.

Ong (2009 Frontiers cohort) chose to join EEB’s doctoral program because she really enjoyed working with her advisor, Vandermeer, and thinks that UM's theoretical ecology program and proximity to Detroit, which is currently the center of urban agricultural movements, was ideal.

“I found out that I was interested more in theoretical ecology and agroecology than conservation biology by going through the Frontiers program and being exposed to all sorts of research conducted at U-M,” Ong said. “Frontiers is a great program for deciding where to go next. It really helped me explore a variety of options, which helped me to decide what was best for me.”

Ong is currently investigating spatially-explicit ecological dynamics in urban gardens as part of Project Grow. Specifically, she is investigating the complex relationships between pea plants and other leguminous crops, plant pests (aphids) and the natural enemies of the pests (ladybird beetles and fungi). Ong and her collaborators will apply field, theoretical, and lab work towards understanding the patterns and mechanisms of pest and natural enemy dispersal through urban areas.  

Yitbarek (2008 Frontiers cohort) focuses on complexity, space, games, emergence, and assembly with his advisor, Vandermeer, and believes that there was no other place in the world than to join UM’s EEB department. “My choice for joining the Ph.D. program was relatively simple. I wanted to work with John Vandermeer,” Yitbarek said.

“Professor Vandermeer belongs to the last creed of world-class intellectuals and has made significant contributions to theoretical ecology as well as advanced this knowledge to the burgeoning field of agricultural ecology that sustains the livelihoods of millions of small farmers with the science of ecology.

“My training as a master student with John Vandermeer was aimed at helping me to discover things on my own, to challenge my own and others’ ideas, and to make mistakes, which in return gave me a much more profound understanding of the material at hand than any of the As I ever received in my life. In short, I became truly educated.”

As a Ph.D. student, Yitbarek is investigating the invasion dynamics of the little fire ant Wasmannia auropunctata, considered to be one of the world’s top 100 invasive pests. This species is not considered to be an invasive in its native range, but drastically reduces ant biodiversity outside of its native range. The question of why this is the case continues to be perplexing to many ecologists. By combining theoretical aspects of spatial competition, empirical analysis of competitive networks, and field observation in both Mexico and Puerto Rico, we hope to gain a deeper understanding of the invasion dynamics associated with W. auropunctata.

“Both Ong and Yitbarek have been great students, both during their master's career and now as Ph.D. students,” said Vandermeer. “The direction each of them has taken is a consequence of their experience as Frontier's students and I doubt they would have taken these tracks if it had not been for the opportunities offered them by the Frontier's program. In addition to the perspectives both bring to my lab with their distinct cultural backgrounds, they bring a diversity of intellectual engagement that has been exciting for everyone in the lab. This diversity of scholarly pursuit has been an incredibly important contribution of the Frontier's program to our department more generally.”

EEB graduate students Celia Churchill and Wenfeng Qian won the 2012 EEB Outstanding Paper Award. Churchill’s cover story in Current Biology (October 2011), “Females Floated First in Bubble-Rafting Snails” and Qian’s “Balanced codon usage optimizes eukaryotic translational efficiency” in PLoS Genetics (March 2012) were selected by the review committee of Ya Yang and Sourya Shrestha, EEB postdoctoral fellows. 

Regarding the paper Churchill coauthored with her advisor, Professor Diarmaid Ó Foighil, and others, Yang and Shrestha wrote, “As the paper's opening states, it is indeed a challenge to explain drastic evolutionary changes mechanistically, and this paper – by providing phylogenetic evidence for a sequence of morphological evolutionary changes that shows how exactly neustonic (microscopic organisms that float on the surface of open water) bubble-rafting snails arose from its benthic (organisms living on sea or lake bottoms) ancestors – does that. The exposition is first rate, concise yet mostly accessible to non-experts, and the results are conclusive and impressive.”

Qian’s paper was coauthored with Jian-Rong Yang, former visiting student, Nathaniel M. Pearson, former postdoctoral fellow, Calum Maclean, postdoctoral fellow, and Qian’s advisor, Professor Jianzhi Zhang. The review committee wrote, “The paper attempted a very difficult question of the mechanisms behind codon usage bias. The authors used multiple arguments, including an elegant experimental manipulation in yeast. In the end, the author proposed a general evolutionary model that translation accuracy, coevolution between tRNA recycling and codon usage, and mutation and drift together determine the patterns of codon usage bias. The article is well written and well organized. The message is clear and convincing for evolutionary biologists in general.” 

Shrestha wrote, “Ya and I enjoyed reading five nominees for this year's outstanding student papers. The papers spanned a wide range of topics and employed various techniques, each making substantive contribution in their areas.”

Every year a graduate student paper is selected based on approach of study, scope of findings, and insights into questions of broad scientific interest using multiple lines of evidence. The winners will share the $500 prize.

Pictured: Wenfeng Qian and Celia Churchill

Recent graduate Dr. Tory Hendry begins a postdoctoral fellowship in July 2012 with Dr. David Baltrus, an assistant professor in The School of Plant Sciences at the University of Arizona. Baltrus’ lab works on the evolution of host range in Pseudomonas syringae, a bacterial plant pathogen. “I'll be using comparative genomic analyses to look at how P. syringae evolves to different plant species,” said Hendry. “I am also interested in investigating the role of insects in dispersing P. syringae between plants.

“Pseudomonas is a fairly important plant pathogen, so understanding how it travels around is useful for agriculture. Understanding how pathogens adapt to new hosts is also important for the study of emerging diseases. Both of these points are especially true now, when increased globalization has the potential to move pathogens around more and climate change is predicted to expand the natural geographic ranges of many plant and insect species.” Hendry's advisor was Professor Paul Dunlap.

At the top of the day’s agenda was identifying and documenting wild flowers, insects, fungi, trees, birds and mammals.

On April 20, 2012 a group of volunteers from the University of Michigan’s Ecological Society of America’s SEEDS chapter and 40 students from Detroit’s Western International High School participated in the 2012 National Coordinated Chapter BioBlitz at the U-M Nichols Arboretum.

Coordinated by chapter leaders of ESA’s Strategies for Ecology Education, Diversity, and Sustainability (SEEDS) program, the event aims to increase awareness of local biodiversity, the importance of environmental stewardship of wildlife and natural areas, and exposure to career opportunities.

EEB graduate student Beatriz Otero Jimenez was one of the main coordinators of the event that was part of the national BioBlitz, a rapid biodiversity assessment occurring on college campuses in 2012. The purpose of these events is to promote local ecological knowledge and increase participation of underrepresented groups in ecological education. Students conducted surveys of wildlife present in the Arboretum with help from volunteers from the U-M community including faculty, Arboretum employees, undergraduate and graduate students. Otero Jimenez worked with co-coordinator, Tiffany Carey, a biology undergraduate student. Other EEB volunteers included: Aaron Iverson, Claire Malley (an undergraduate biology major with an EEB concentration), Theresa Ong, Lillian Smith, Iman Sylvain and William Webb.

The mission of the SEEDS program is to diversify and advance the ecology profession through opportunities that stimulate and nurture the interest of underrepresented students to not only participate in ecology, but to lead. Focused mainly at the undergraduate level, with extension services for communities, high schools, graduate students, and international collaborations, the SEEDS program promotes an ecology profession with wide representation to ensure environmental understanding and a sustainable future for all.

Captions (from top): Students birdwatching.

EEB graduate student Aaron Iverson working with students.

A walk through the Nichols Arboretum.

EEB graduate student Iman Sylvain working with a student.

EEB graduate students Beatriz Otero Jimenez and Iman Sylvain.

Photo and caption in Record Update, April 23, 2012

EEB is excited to announce the 2012 Ph.D. and master’s student cohorts. There are 10 doctoral students and eight master’s students joining EEB in the fall.

"The three graduate programs in EEB (doctoral, traditional master’s, Frontiers master’s) are absolutely fundamental to the mission of the department," said Mark Hunter, Henry A. Gleason Collegiate Professor and acting chair of EEB. "It's wonderful to see a new cohort of students of such high quality joining the department. It's through students like these that EEB is able to maintain excellence in research, teaching and outreach."

Joining the Ph.D. program this fall are (list includes name, advisor, previous institution, research interest): Cindy Bick, Professor Diarmaid Ó Foighil, Frontiers master’s student, University of Michigan (EEB), molecular evolution, adaptive phenotypes; Karin Dove, Professor John Vandermeer, University of California Davis, mathematical modeling, agroecology, plant-animal interactions; Anthony Fredericks, Professor Paul Dunlap, Occidental College, symbiotic systems, phylogenetics, microbial ecology, marine ecology, phenotypic plasticity; Dylan Grippi, Professor Meghan Duffy, Georgia Institute of Technology, disease ecology and evolution; Pamela Martinez Vargas, Professor Mercedes Pascual, Universidad Chile, phylodynamics of pathogens; Celia Miller, Professors Brad Cardinale and Mark Hunter, University of Alaska Fairbanks, niche conservatism, invasive species, dispersal evolution; Marian Schmidt, Professor Vincent Denef, Hampshire College, microbial communities and their evolution; Jeff Shi, Professors Catherine Badgley and Dan Rabosky, Duke University, broad-scale patterns of diversification, interspecific and ecological interactions; Andrew Strayer, Professors Aaron King and Mercedes Pascual, University of Chicago, population dynamics; Pascal Title, Professor Dan Rabosky, San Diego State University, niche modeling, spatial analysis, diversification parameters in different climate zones, herpetology.

The Frontiers master’s cohort includes: Clarisse Betancourt, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, climatic change, global warming, application of remote sensing and GIS for resource management; Omar Bonilla, Universidad Metropolitana, bird-plant ecology, biodiversity; Buck Castillo, University of Michigan, terrestrial ecology, root dynamics of a temperate forest ecosystem; Naim Edwards, Morehouse College, dynamics of biodiversity in farming systems; Lizette Ramirez, University of Michigan, invertebrate biodiversity in the Neotropics. Advisors are to be determined.

The traditional master’s cohort includes: Kevin Bakker, Professor Pej Rohani, Michigan State University, disease ecology, population ecology, mathematical modeling; Lisa Walsh, Professor Priscilla Tucker, Birmingham Southern College, genetic viability of critical species, assessing the biodiversity and health of the ecosystem; Benjamin Miller, Professor George Kling, Bowdoin College, biogeochemical research in the Arctic.

Image: Fox kit taken in Alaska by current graduate student Jason Dobkowski.

EEB recent graduate, Dr. Susanna Messinger, accepted a  Gaylord Donnelley Postdoctoral Environmental Fellowship through the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies (YIBS). Four Donnelley Fellowships are awarded each year. It's a two year fellowship that Messinger will begin in July.

Messinger’s sponsor, Dr. David Vasseur, is interested in how environmental fluctuations influence population and community dynamics and more recently has been delving into the realm of eco-evolutionary dynamics.

“I am also going to be collaborating with Dr. Mark Urban at the University of Connecticut who studies the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that shape communities over different spatial scales,” she said. “I will be starting a project to study predator evolution in a spatial context. The idea is that spatial structure can induce eco-evolutionary feedbacks that significantly affect predator evolution and thus will play an important role in population dynamics as well as the structure and stability of complex communities. I will be building up from theory that I developed here as a graduate student and will attempt to test some of this theory using small predators, like protozoans or Daphnia. I'm particularly excited by the prospect of bridging theoretical and experimental data, since this is not often done!”

Messinger’s EEB advisor was Professor Annette Ostling.

EEB graduate students Alison Gould, David Marvin and Beatriz Otero Jimenez received Rackham International Research Awards from the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies and the U-M International Institute.

Gould studies host-symbiont dynamics in a bioluminescent fish in Professor Paul Dunlap's lab. “My research addresses the recruitment dynamics and population connectivity of the symbiotically bioluminescent cardinalfish, Siphamia versicolo,” Gould said. “I plan to look for signals of genetic structure in S.versicolor and its luminous symbiont, Photobacterium mandapamensis, over a biogeographic region in the Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan, and to determine the extent to which genetic structure of the bacteria matches structure in its host fish. These genetic patterns and the relationship between host and symbiont will provide substantial insight on the questions of whether populations of coral reef fishes are open or closed and where larval S. versicolor acquire their symbiont in nature.” Gould received $5,000 to carry out this research in Okinawa, Japan this summer.

Marvin said, “The grant will support my dissertation research, which uses a combination of airborne and satellite remote sensing imagery with field-based forest censuses to discriminate liana (woody vine) and tree canopy cover in tropical forests. The research develops a method to detect liana canopy cover at landscape scales, quantify its extent, and verify whether it has increased over recent decades. The discovery that lianas have increased in size and abundance in tropical forests suggests these forests may see a change in community composition and a reduction in their carbon storage capacity. Monitoring changes in liana canopy cover will increase the accuracy of predicted changes to tropical forests, and aid in understanding the mechanisms responsible for increasing liana size and abundance.” His advisor is Professor Robyn Burnham and he received $7,500.

Otero Jimenez is interested in researching the effect of different land uses on biodiversity and ecosystem function, especially in agricultural systems. This summer, she will be working in Chiapas, Mexico with her advisor, Professor John Vandermeer. “I will be looking at the effect matrix composition has on dispersal and connectivity of forest animals. I will be working specifically with Heteromys desmarestianus, forest mice that live in moist tropical forests. I will be working in forest patches surrounded by coffee farms.” She will collect tissue samples for two months and return to Ann Arbor to do DNA extraction and genetic analysis to determine if populations from different forest patches are distinct and how connected they are. Otero Jimenez received $7,000.

RIRAs are presented to students with strong academic records who demonstrate outstanding scholarly and professional promise, steady progress toward their degrees and have feasible plans for conducting international dissertation or thesis-related research.