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Philip Myers
Professor
Curator, Museum of Zoology
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1975
U-M affiliation(s)
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Museum of Zoology
Contact information
University of Michigan
3048 Museums Bldg.
1109 Geddes Ave.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1079
Phone: (734) 647-2206
Fax: (734) 763-4080
Email: pmyers@umich.edu |
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Fields of study
Biosystematics and ecology of mammals
Academic background
I received my undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College (1969) and my Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1975).
Graduate students
Eladio Marquez, Lucia Luna Wong, Diego Alvarado Serrano, Judy Wan
News
Warming affects small mammals
Professor Phil Myers’ research on the climate change induced shifting of critter populations in Michigan was featured in the Detroit Free Press April 9, 2007.
Myers is associate curator of the U-M Museum of Zoology. He has found that over the past 25 years, many creatures such as possums, flying squirrels and deer mice have shifted their ranges further north as winters get warmer. This displaces their northern cousins, which in some cases, have become extinct.
“The very fabric of the small mammal community has changed,” said Myers. He studied many possible causes such as habitat and food but he believes warmer temperatures are the culprit.
NSF grant to promote active learning in ecology and biodiversity
Professor Phil Myers, associate curator of the Museum of Zoology, received a National Science Foundation grant titled “Exploring Natural History: Promoting Active Learning in Ecology and Biodiversity.” The 20-month grant is for over $149,000 starting in March 2007.
He will be exploring ways of using their large database of natural history, the Animal Diversity Web, as a foundation for teaching about patterns and processes in ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation biology. Classes at U-M, EMU, MSU, NMU, Kalamazoo College, Radford College, and Jackson Community College are participating. Completion of this project will result in substantial improvement in the quality of education in organismal biology and ecology.
Wild weather, changing climate
With politicians discussing global warming legislation, and weather behaving erratically across the nation, climate change suddenly seems to be hot news. But around the U-M campus, scientists have been probing the complexities and consequences of changing climate for decades.
The research of EEB Professors Mercedes Pascual and Philip Myers is featured in a new exhibit "Climate Change: Local impacts, global responsibility" in the Museum of Natural History rotunda, along with the work of eight other U-M scientists. Pascual and her collaborators in Barcelona and Bangladesh found evidence that a phenomenon called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation -- a major source of climate variability from year to year--influences cycles of cholera in Bangladesh.
Myers of the Museum of Zoology, has shown that over the past 20 years, in response to climate change, species of mammals that once lived only in Michigan's Lower Peninsula and the southern portion of the Upper Peninsula are expanding their ranges farther north, while northern species are disappearing from all but the most northerly reaches of their ranges in the state.
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