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Congrats to Rafael Valentin for winning the best presentation in invasion ecology for his talk at ESA 2017! Rafael's talk was titled "Utility of eDNA as a surveillance framework in terrestrial systems." The award comes with a $250 prize as well as recognition at next year's ESA invasion ecology mixer. Great work, Rafael!
This year, at Botany 2017, Ecology and Evolution PhD candidate, Jennifer Blake-Mahmud, gave a talk titled "Sugars, stress, and sex-change: environmental sex determination in striped maple" from her work in Dr. Lena Struwe's lab. The presentation described her work in New Jersey forests focusing on sexual plasticity in maple trees. Sexual plasticity is a rare in flowering plants, but her study species, the striped maple (pictured below) is one of these rare species. Jennifer's work has discovered that the most severely damaged trees tend to switch to female sex expression, and female trees tend to experience increased mortality. Additional details on Jennifer's work can be found here. Congrats, Jennifer!
Ecology and Evolution Masters student Sarah Borsetti recently participated in a international workshop focusing on “Whelk (Buccinum undatum) Ageing: Instruction and Practice of Ageing Whelks by Statoliths”, organized by Department of Fisheries and Oceans, St. John’s, NL, Canada. This workshop was instructed by Professor Christopher Richardson and Dr. Philip Hollyman of Bangor University, both leading experts in innovative whelk aging techniques. This workshop provided fisheries scientists and students with hands-on learning experience ageing whelk from their statoliths. These statoliths are microscopic calcium carbonate structures that have annual growth rings. This new ageing technique can be used as reliable tool for fisheries scientists to assess population age structure and can be incorporated into stock assessments of this species to allow better management and sustainability of whelk fisheries. This workshop featured a series of talks and discussions about whelk population status around the world and a comparison of different ageing techniques and validations. Sarah presented her masters work on whelk in the Mid-Atlantic waters of the United States.
Michael Acquafredda wins $14,963 Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Grant8/16/2017
Mike was awarded $14,963 over two years for his proposal titled "Breeding for thermal tolerance in farmed Atlantic surfclams (Spisula solidissima)".
Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (NE SARE) "is a regional program of the nationwide SARE effort; SARE is part of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, or NIFA." (http://www.nesare.org/About-Us/About-Northeast-SARE). Visit Mike's webpage here: http://hsrl.rutgers.edu/people/students/macquafredda.htm Congrats, Mike! |
We seek to further the social, cultural, academic and research interests of the students in the graduate program in Ecology and Evolution and act as a link between the graduate students and the faculty. Archives
May 2024
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