EECB at UNR

🎉We also want to send out a big congratulations to all of our EECB students who received spring awards from the GSA!

⭐️Val Alaasam, Aramee Diethelm, Trevor Faske, and Ben Sonnenberg each received the Outstanding Graduate Student Scholarship!

⭐️Masoud Rostami was awarded the Outstanding International Graduate Student Scholarship!

⭐️Stephanie Coronado received the Outstanding Graduate Student Service Award!

⭐️Devon Picklum received the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award!

⭐️Jennifer Heppner was awarded the Milton Glick Memorial Scholarship!

⭐️Anson Call and Saw Sudta received research, travel and material grants!

🎉Congratulations to Jess Buelow & Otis Clyne, who are 2022 recipients of the NSF GRFP!! The GRFP is a highly selective national award that provides three years of support to selected outstanding STEM graduate students.

🐝Jess is advised by Anne Leonard and is broadly interested in how climate change will affect plant chemistry, and how these changes will influence bee foraging choices. She’s currently designing a summer field project to see how increasing temperatures will affect the protein, lipid, and alkaloid content in the pollen and nectar of death camas (Toxicoscordion paniculatum), and how this may affect the behavior of the specialist bee (Andrena astragali) that forages on it.

🌱Otis is advised by Bob Shriver and his proposal was about utilizing life-history strategies to influence the success of the restoration of big sagebrush systems after disturbance. Through his research he aims to address the question of whether increasing seed introduction frequency of slow LH plants aid in overcoming reproductive time-lags and resulting establishment disadvantages of slow LH species.

🎉🎉Congratulations to EECB’s Jen Heppner on winning Three Minute Thesis yesterday evening! 3MT is an annual event put on by the graduate school where masters and doctoral students have a three minute time limit to present on their dissertation work.

🐥🐣Jen’s presentation was titled “Do mother’s know best? Stress in our city birds.” The amount of information, interesting science and personality she was able to put into three minutes was truly impressive. She won BOTH the doctoral category and the people’s choice award!

🌈EECB also had a very strong showing in the audience; thanks to everyone who went to support Jen and congrats to all the finalists who competed yesterday!

Big congratulations to EECB PhD candidate Valentina Alaasam on being awarded this year’s Jenkins Graduate Fellowship in Ecology!!!

Val is advised by Jenny Ouyang. Broadly her thesis work is centered on urbanization and light pollution and how this affects behavior and physiology of organisms, specifically birds. Val is a highly accomplished researcher and is a NSF graduate research fellow as well as first author on a number of publications. She is also very involved in the graduate student community and serves on the EECB JEDI Committee.

The Jenkins Fellowship is a competitive fellowship aimed at supporting recipients as they progress towards completion of their degree and provides support for tuition, salary and professional travel for one semester.

Big congrats to EECB student Chanchanok Sudta on her first author paper! Saw is advised by Lee Dyer. This paper is focused on associations between local abundance and dietary specialization of caterpillars in Ecuador.

Congrats Saw!

Jack‐of‐all‐trades paradigm meets long‐term data: Generalist herbivores are more widespread and locally less abundant Using an 18-year dataset of caterpillar-plant interactions from Ecuador, we find that more specialized caterpillars are locally more abundant than generalists, consistent with a key component of the ...

Congratulations to EECB student Lanie Galland on this new paper in Scientific Reports: Hierarchical genetic structure and implications for conservation of the world’s largest salmonid, Hucho taimen!

Lanie is advised by Tom Parchman and Mary Peacock. This work can be used to inform conservation and management decisions for this species of fish. Check it out!

(PDF) Hierarchical genetic structure and implications for conservation of the world's largest salmonid, Hucho taimen PDF | Population genetic analyses can evaluate how evolutionary processes shape diversity and inform conservation and management of imperiled species.... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

Big congrats to Katie Uckele (current EECB PhD student) and Joshua Jahner (former EECB student and current postdoc) on their new paper in Scientific Reports! Katie and Josh are both part of the Parchman Lab here at UNR, and this paper is on phytochemical evolution in the Piperaceae plant genus. Take a look!

Phytochemistry reflects different evolutionary history in traditional classes versus specialized structural motifs - Scientific Reports Foundational hypotheses addressing plant–insect codiversification and plant defense theory typically assume a macroevolutionary pattern whereby closely related plants have similar chemical profiles. However, numerous studies have documented variation in the degree of phytochemical trait lability, ...

Congrats to doctoral student Kelly Robinson on publishing this paper from her masters work at San Diego State!! This paper is focused on coevolution of venom and venom resistance and the predator-prey relationship of two sympatric species of rattlesnake and their prey species.

www.researchgate.net

Wondering about the landscapes you may be moving through during summer travels around Nevada? Look no further than David Charlet’s new book "Nevada Mountains: Landforms, Trees and Vegetation".

Dr. Charlet received his Ph.D from the EECB program here at UNR, and has since been a professor of biology at the College of Southern Nevada. This book contains maps and descriptions for all of the 319 mountain ranges in Nevada, including natural history information for each, and is described as “a required reference for anyone venturing out into the Nevada wilds”.

Nevada Mountains | The University of Utah Press Copyright: 2019Trim: 8.5 in x 11 inPages: 432 Hardback9781607817277$ 75.00Short eBook9781607817284$ 60.00Short Nevada Mountains Landforms, Trees, and Vegetation //=$meta['subtitle'][0]?> By David Alan Charlet Nevada is one of the most mountainous states in the US. Yet mapping out exactly where one r...

😁Another feature Friday is here!!!

🎣Today, we are featuring a new EECB student, Aldo San Pedro (he/him & they/them)! Aldo started in January 2021 as a masters student in Sudeep Chandra's Aquatic ecosystems analysis laboratory (AEAL). They are from Las Vegas NV, and before coming to UNR was delivering mail, attending college part time, and making art.

🦐Aldo’s research centers around algae and macro invertebrates. Their algal anomalies project is investigating attached algae community responses to grazer pressure and nutrient manipulations in Castle Lake and Cliff Lake in CA (two subalpine lakes sensitive to global change). Aldo is also working on elucidating unknown macro-invertebrate communities along a thermal gradient in a wetland of environmental concern near the Black Rock Desert.

🎨Aldo is passionate about creating art, and aims to increase academia's representation of artists within STEM as a M.S. student. They have future plans to make a UNR Biology department art zine aimed at “showcasing creative talent (and appealing research figures) from UNR’s STEM community.” They aim to get a proof-of-concept zine developed by next spring semester to leverage funding for physical zine prints. For now, their art can be found on their website (www.sanaldo.co) and revenue generated from Art commissions and print sales are split between local non-profit art initiatives in Reno and Vegas and funding extra analysis and supplies for their Master's research. The photos featured here are some example’s of Aldo’s artwork.

In addition, congrats to EECB post-doc Joshua Jahner on this paper in Molecular Ecology, “Multigenerational backcrossing and introgression between two woodrat species at an abrupt ecological transition”. Joshua works with Thomas Parchman and Marjorie Matocq. Population genetic data was used for this paper to look at the hybridization of two types of woodrat: desert woodrat and Bryant’s woodrat.

Multigenerational backcrossing and introgression between two woodrat species at an abrupt ecological transition When organisms experience secondary contact after allopatric divergence, genomic regions can introgress differentially depending on their relationships with adaptation, reproductive isolation, recomb...

A new paper for this Friday afternoon! Congrats to Haley Moniz on her first-author paper “Every breath you take: Assessing metabolic costs of toxin resistance in garter snakes” in Integrative Zoology. Haley is a PhD student advised by Chris Feldman. Haley is currently studying tetrodotoxin resistance in garter snakes and this paper examines potential evolutionary trade offs due to the cost of developing resistance to this strong toxin. Check it out!

Every breath you take: Assessing metabolic costs of toxin resistance in garter snakes (Thamnophis) Trait specialization often comes at the expense of original trait function, potentially causing evolutionary tradeoffs that may render specialist populations vulnerable to extinction. However, many s...