Dr. Kocot and his team are currently on board the RVIB Nathaniel B. Palmer and underway to study the biodiversity of deep sea invertebrates in waters off Antarctica. Typically Antarctic research expeditions are executed from Chile, New Zealand, or Tasmania, Australia, but the COVID-19 pandemic made this a difficult year for the National Science Foundation, the United States Antarctic Program, and researchers to execute Antarctic research. Instead of flying to a port in the southern hemisphere and taking a ship […]

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Dr. McKain has been awarded an NSF Rules of Life grant entitled “RoL: RUI: Collaborative Research: Understanding the Ecological and Genomic Bases of Local Adaptation in an Obligate Pollination Mutualism”, led by colleagues at Willamette University with collaborators at California State University—Northridge, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and the US Geological Survey Western Ecological Research Center. This four year project will investigate patterns of genetic and physiological variation in Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia and Yucca jaegeriana) as they have adapted […]

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Climate warming not only threatens individual species, but also disturbs entire ecosystems. A new study in Nature Climate Change by Dr. Sasha Greenspan and other Becker Lab members and collaborators explored how warming effects on ecological communities influence the animal gut microbiome, a group of microbes that helps animals stay healthy. They set up miniature aquatic ecosystems with tadpoles, bacteria, worms, mosquito larvae, and other insects within water-holding tropical plants called bromeliads and exposed them to a warming gradient. They […]

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Coastal wetland restoration is increasingly utilized to offset wetland loss and degradation and to recover ecosystem services, making it important to evaluate the relative effectiveness and times to functional equivalence of different restoration strategies. Two critically important services provided by coastal wetlands are carbon storage and nitrogen removal. By restoring or creating wetlands, it is possible to recover these functions and services, thereby promoting more resilient coastal watersheds. As part of a new Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant project, entitled “Assessing Recovery […]

Read More from Drs. Cherry & Mortazavi awarded grant to study recovery of restored tidal marshes

Drs. Atkinson, Benstead and Jones have been awarded an EPSCoR RII Track 2 FEC proposal titled “Aquatic Intermittency effects on Microbiomes in Streams (AIMS),” led by colleagues at the University of Kansas and with collaborators at University of Mississippi, University of Southern Mississippi, University of Oklahoma, Kansas State University, and Idaho State University. This 4-year project with a start date of September 2020 will allow the team to address knowledge gaps on intermittently flowing streams, which control the quantity and quality of water delivered downstream to perennial […]

Read More from Drs. Atkinson, Benstead and Jones awarded EPSCoR grant to study intermittently flowing streams

This year Dr. Jane Rasco and Jim Rasco have established the The Jane and Jim Rasco Endowed Scholarship in Biology. The scholarship shall be awarded based on the following criteria: Priority of consideration shall be given to sophomore students who are enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences, are majoring in biology, who have maintained between a 3.2 and a 3.6 grade point average on a 4.0 scale, and who are residents of the state of Alabama. The purpose […]

Read More from Jane and Jim Rasco Endowed Scholarship in Biology established

Dr. Kocot received a grant as part of a large collaborative project entitled “Digitization TCN: Collaborative Research: documenting marine biodiversity through Digitization of Invertebrate collections (DigIn).” This project is led by Dr. Regina Wetzer (Los Angeles County Museum); and the UA share is $33,235; project total: $1,776,008). Dr. Kocot, a co-PI on the project, and his collaborators at 23 institutions nationwide aim to greatly improve the accessibility of data on marine invertebrate biodiversity by more than doubling digitally-accessible marine invertebrate […]

Read More from Dr. Kocot awarded NSF grant to digitize ALMNH Invertebrate Zoology collection

President: John Sutton (Fierst lab) Vice-President: Jennie Thies (Caldwell lab) Secretary: MaryBeth Rowland (Correll lab) Treasurer: Sam Siomko (Becker lab) GSA Rep: Jennifer Fortunato (Earley lab)

Read More from Congratulations to the 2020-2021 BGSA officers