University of Michigan
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Cindy Bick, Frontiers master’s student and John Guittar, Ph.D. student, are winners of U-M’s International Institute Individual Fellowships. They will each receive $4,000 to help support their research abroad.

Cindy Bick will conduct research this summer at the Zoological Society of London. Bick will be gathering demographic data from their captive Tahitian tree snail populations to investigate why some species differentially survived a recent mass extinction event.

Guittar will investigate the origins and evolution of Pouteria, a taxonomically confusing genus of trees with a high relative abundance in many tropical forests.  “Specifically, I am interested in exploring the roles of hybridization and reproductive isolation on tropical tree diversification,” said Guittar. “The International Institute Fellowship will support one summer of travel and help me to build connections with botanists and local students at Yasuni field station in eastern Ecuador.”