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David Ackerly - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Climate change poses special challenges to plant taxa that depend on isolated habitat patches like montane meadows. Opportunities to move and/or adapt may be limited. Evolutionary adaptation requires heritable variation in adaptive traits, which is often low for isolated populations. Non-evolutionary adaptation via phenotypic plasticity depends on individuals...
Biological & Health SciencesDavid Ackerly - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Habitat restoration will only provide long-term benefits if restored vegetation is resilient to climate change. Sourcing plant material from distant climate zones may achieve climate resilience but carries other risks. Restorationists need a framework for sourcing climate-resilient plant material locally. Our research addresses this problem for Lemmon’s willow...
Biological & Health SciencesDavid Ackerly - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
The Levant is an understudied biodiversity hotspot that harbors one of the world’s richest extratropical floras. This project aims to improve our understanding of the distribution of vascular plant diversity of Western Lebanon and Syria through an evolutionary lens. We will sequence DNA from each genus native to the Levant...
Biological & Health SciencesAnnaliese Beery - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
Research in our laboratory is focused on factors that influence affiliative social behavior in two species of voles. This project involves working with a graduate student on genotyping a colony of oxytocin receptor deficient voles in advance of behavioral testing, or continuations of other pre-arranged research projects. All students...
Rauri Bowie - Professor, Integrative Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs Location: On Campus
We are working on a project to study the adaptation and evolutionary history of hummingbirds and sunbirds. Hummingbirds and sunbirds are two groups of birds that have independently adopted nectar as a major component of their diet and have evolved to be morphologically similar. Our project aims to explore whether...
Biological & Health SciencesRauri Bowie - Professor, Integrative Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs Location: On Campus
My lab is involved with a large collaborative project to study disease transmission within and among species of wild birds. As part of this project, swabs of a variety of bird species are being collected to study their microbial communities (i.e. their microbiome). Lab studies suggest that microbial diversity can...
Biological & Health SciencesRauri Bowie - Professor, Integrative Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs Location: On Campus
Students can assist with several ongoing research projects that investigate geographic variation and species limits in birds and integrate these data with quantification of prevalence of disease vectors such as bird malaria and trypanosome infections...
Biological & Health SciencesRauri Bowie - Professor, Integrative Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
Nest structures are widespread across animals including insects, fish, amphibians, and most conspicuously, birds. Despite their ubiquity, nests remain one of the most understudied components of avian life history. Some of the most remarkable examples of elaborate nest design are within the passerine weaverbirds (family Ploceidae). Weaverbirds are an Old...
Biological & Health SciencesGeorge A. Brooks - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Projects 1 (Cell and Molecular Regulation of Metabolism) and 2 (Whole body Metabolic Regulation) are related. The student will be working on a large interdisciplinary research project investigating the effects of aging, gender and physical fitness on the control the balance of energy derived from different fuel sources within the...
Biological & Health SciencesGeorge A. Brooks - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Projects 1 (Cell and Molecular Regulation of Metabolism) and 2 (Whole body Metabolic Regulation) are related. The student will be working on a large interdisciplinary research project investigating the effects of aging, gender and physical fitness on the control the balance of energy derived from different fuel sources within the...
Biological & Health SciencesGeorge A. Brooks - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
We are in the process of identifying the physiological signals responsible for lactate transporter expression. For this purpose when have developed a muscle cell culture system to study the influences of various putative factors in lactate transporter gene and protein expression. This project can cell culture, Western bottling (for protein...
Biological & Health SciencesGeorge A. Brooks - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
The applicant will work with GSI/GSR Austin Peck on the discovery of metabolic signaling following Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) to rats and mice. Responsibilities will run the full gambit from assisting in animal handling (including care and feeding), to data collection and analysis. Injured and uninjured control animals will...
Biological & Health SciencesRoy Caldwell - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
Research in my laboratory is focused on stomatopod crustaceans, or mantis shrimp as they are commonly called. Stomatopods are marine predators that have evolved powerful raptorial appendages used in prey capture and processing as well as in inter- and intraspecific fighting. Current research in my laboratory is examining several aspects...
Biological & Health SciencesRoy Caldwell - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
In my lab we also study octopus behavior. Very few octopus species have been successfully hatched and reared in the laboratory. Species with direct development might be useful for studying the early development of behavior. Since juvenile octopus must be reared individually, this is a labor intensive and time consuming...
Biological & Health SciencesTodd Dawson - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
California’s coastal grasslands, hosting roughly 90% of the state’s rare and endangered life, and 40% of the state’s native vegetation, are an important carbon sink, and a valuable natural and cultural resource. Over the past 150 years, native grasslands have waned in an absence of herbivory and fire disturbance, which...
Biological & Health SciencesRobert Dudley - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
Flying insects are the most diverse and abundant form of animal life in the terrestrial biosphere. However, the origins of insect flight remain obscure given the absence of a transitional fossil record. This project will involve construction of a small robot that mimics the likely morphology of early insects, and...
Biological & Health SciencesSeth Finnegan - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
For tens of millions of years large parts of California’s Central Valley were flooded by the ocean, creating an inland sea with a unique ecosystem including now-extinct species of clams, snails, sand dollars, corals, and other groups familiar from modern California beaches. Some of the species that lived in...
Biological & Health SciencesSeth Finnegan - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Besides coral, marine reefs are made up of many other strange invertebrates, including the little-known “moss animal”, or bryozoan. These abundant, microscopic filter-feeders grow in colonies and build elaborate domes, lacework, and tree-like structures on the ocean floor, from the intertidal to the abyss, from the poles...
Biological & Health SciencesSeth Finnegan - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
The rise of the Isthmus of Panama ~3 million years ago was arguably the most important biotic and oceanographic event of the past 60 million years. By connecting North and South America, the rise of the Isthmus caused the Great American interchange of terrestrial plant and animal species. In the...
Biological & Health SciencesSeth Finnegan - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Mass extinctions in the fossil record provide us with case studies of biodiversity crises and global change that extend beyond human timescales. Approximately 445 million years ago, about 80% of marine animal species on Earth became extinct during a period of global climate change; however, the primary drivers and the...
Biological & Health SciencesMimi Koehl - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
We are studying the biomechanics and biofluiddynamics of how organisms interact with their physical environments. Our interdisciplinary work is at the interface between biology and engineering, so students majoring in biology, engineering, physics, or math have all participated in research in our lab. There are a variety of projects that...
Biological & Health Sciences Engineering, Design & TechnologiesBritt Koskella - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
Microbiomes change over time, often with important functional consequences for their hosts. But the ecological drivers of microbiome succession are poorly understood. We are studying the role that microbial interactions play in this process by examining the constituents of the digestive microbiome of the insectivorous California pitcher plant (Darlingtonia californica...
Biological & Health SciencesBritt Koskella - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
Phage, viruses that infect and kill bacteria, are ubiquitous, yet their impacts on beneficial bacteria that colonize plants are not well understood. Phage are abundant in the soil and therefore soil-dwelling bacteria must hone defenses against phage in order to survive. Likewise, phage must hone their capacity to infect...
Biological & Health SciencesBritt Koskella - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
We are building a new system (fire blight of pear trees) to better understand how bacteriophage viruses might impact the ability of a bacterial pathogen (Erwinia amylovora) to colonize and infect pear trees. We are tracking bacteria-phage interactions through time by isolating individual phages from each of 25 diseased...
Biological & Health SciencesBritt Koskella - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
In natural systems, microorganisms interact with myriad other microbial populations which influence their evolution and ecology. When associated with a eukaryotic host, these complex microbial communities (known as microbiomes) also interact with and impact their host’s ecology and evolution, nutrient acquisition, and pathogen susceptibility. Despite the microbiome's...
Biological & Health SciencesEileen Lacey - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Broadly, we seek to understand how mechanisms in the brain contribute to the vast differences in social behavior evident among mammals, with particular interest in the evolution of such neural and behavioral diversity. Dispersal is an important behavioral and life history transition. Much variation in sociality arises due to differences...
Biological & Health SciencesJuan Liu - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Lateral line sensory system, or lateral line organ, or simply the lateral line, is a system of sensory organs found in fish and some tetrapods (four-legged vertebrates). The lateral line enables those vertebrates to detect and perceive the hydrodynamic and physical environment they inhabit including movement, vibration, and pressure...
Arts & Humanities Biological & Health SciencesJuan Liu - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Scientific illustration is art in the service of science by drawing, painting, or rendering images of scientific subjects to accurately inform and communicate sciences. Research in fossil fishes (paleoichthyology) is at the junction of paleontology and ichthyology, and therefore, possesses characteristics of both —-- the incomplete nature of fossil preservations and...
Arts & Humanities Biological & Health SciencesJuan Liu - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Our study aims to explore the intricate details of mammalian hearing, with a specific emphasis on the function and evolution of the middle ear, with comparative anatomy with fish hearing apparatus. This critical aspect of auditory anatomy plays a pivotal role in the way mammals perceive and interpret sound. By...
Arts & Humanities Biological & Health SciencesJuan Liu - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Catfishes (Siluriformes) are remarkable among hearing specialist fishes in their possession of the Weberian apparatus, a conductive multi-ossicle chain linking the inner ear and swim bladder that is analogous to the middle ear ossicles of the mammalian tetrapods. Work with laboratory animals has produced considerable insight into the role...
Arts & Humanities Biological & Health SciencesCynthia Looy - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs Location: On Campus
At present, flowering plants (angiosperms) represent ~90% of the land plant species and are dominant in most global biomes. However, the first flowering plant is known from the fossil record around 135 million years ago (mya) during the Early Cretaceous, much more recent compared to the gymnosperms, which first appeared...
Environmental Issues Biological & Health SciencesCynthia Looy - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: Off Campus
In many ways, the Earth of the Permian period (298.9-251.9 million years ago) would have looked alien to a modern observer: the Earth’s surface was divided between the supercontinent Pangea and the superocean Panthalassa, strange animals neither mammal nor dinosaur dominated terrestrial faunas, and no flower would bloom for more...
Environmental Issues Biological & Health SciencesCynthia Looy - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs Location: On Campus
The goal of our project is to restore the student-run pre-pandemic pollinator gardens around the Valley Life Science Building (VLSB) that support native arthropods (e.g. insects and spiders) and other wildlife, and will function as an environmental education resource for students. We plan to engage students both inside...
Environmental Issues Biological & Health SciencesCynthia Looy - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: Off Campus
Plants are adapted to the physical conditions in their environments, including temperature, precipitation, atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and light level. In cooler and drier habitats, leaves tend to be smaller with condensed venation and toothed margins. While under warmer and wetter conditions, leaves tend to be larger, have ‘drip tips’, and...
Environmental Issues Biological & Health SciencesCharles Marshall - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
The colonization of land by plants and animals from the oceans was pivotal in our planet’s history, leading to major climate change and the evolution of the great forests, dinosaurs, and our own species. However, the first terrestrial and freshwater aquatic ecosystems are poorly understood due to a spotty fossil...
Biological & Health Sciences Environmental IssuesCharles Marshall - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
This research seeks to understand the factors responsible for species dispersal. Specifically, we are interested in dispersals during an event known as the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI). GABI was a large-scale exchange of taxa between North and South America via the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama. These...
Biological & Health Sciences Environmental IssuesChristopher Martin - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs Location: On Campus
The physical interactions between organisms and their environment ultimately shape their rate of evolution and fitness in the wild, but we are only beginning to understand these connections between phenotype and performance. In this project, students will learn to film high-speed videos of Cyprinodon pupfishes to measure the relationship...
Brent Mishler - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs Location: On Campus
It has been hypothesized that 10% of taxa introduced into novel environments would naturalize, while only about 10% of naturalized alien taxa would become invasive. I am interested in investigating which traits are commonly found in naturalized and invasive plants in Nigeria, West Africa...
Biological & Health Sciences Environmental IssuesBrent Mishler - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Even though sound and sufficiently robust data is the essence of a good scientific paper, the presentation of the findings is of equally great importance in communicating discoveries to the scientific community and advancing the overall knowledge in a field. Presenting data in a clear and accurate manner and putting...
Biological & Health Sciences Environmental IssuesBrent Mishler - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Herbaria are museums that house collections of preserved plants maintained for scientific purposes. For centuries, plant specimens of all kinds have been collected from near and far, mounted on herbarium sheets, labeled with pertinent data, and stored and maintained for use by the scientific community as well as the public...
Biological & Health Sciences Environmental IssuesBrent Mishler - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs Location: On Campus
Ancient and current anthropogenic activities have resulted in the sweepstakes movement of plant germplasms from their native ranges to new geographical regions. Some of these introduced taxa have become daily staple foods in West Africa (e.g., Zea mays, Manihot esculenta, etc.), and crops with significant economic values (e.g., Theobroma cacao...
Biological & Health Sciences Environmental IssuesMichael Nachman - Professor, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Within ~500 years, house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) have expanded into a wide variety of habitats across North and South America. House mice can be found from the tropics to the arctic, and populations inhabiting these different environments have adapted to different thermal regimes. This project will focus on the...
Biological & Health SciencesMichael Nachman - Professor, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Within ~500 years, house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) have expanded into a wide variety of habitats across North and South America. House mice can be found from the tropics to the arctic, and populations inhabiting these different environments have adapted to different thermal regimes. Mice from cold regions are larger...
Biological & Health SciencesDaniel Okamoto - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Current Term Now Closed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Climate change is dramatically altering the oceans. These changes include increases in sea surface temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and primary productivity. We use experiments and field data to assess how these changes affect the physiology, growth, reproduction, and behavior of marine animals. We have numerous samples from past experiments and...
Biological & Health Sciences Environmental IssuesMichael Shapira - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours Location: On Campus
Toxins play important roles in inter-species interactions, and the ability to overcome them can open new niches. The potential of animal genomes to facilitate such adaptations is limited; instead, toxin resistance in animals is often provided by gut bacteria. Human activity and industry has dramatically increased the prevalence of...
Biological & Health Sciences Engineering, Design & TechnologiesMichael Shapira - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours Location: On Campus
Animal microbiotas are increasingly recognized as essential for host health. The gut microbiota is the richest, and was shown to contribute to diverse host functions. Perturbations in microbiota composition are associated with human disease, raising interest in manipulating the microbiota to promote healthier living or treat pathology. However, current understanding...
Biological & Health Sciences Engineering, Design & TechnologiesMichael Shapira - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours Location: On Campus
Aging involves a multi-system physiological deterioration. In addition to affected tissues, and likely as a consequence, aging also affects the gut microbiota, an extensive microbial community which contributes to diverse host functions. Imbalances in microbiota composition, or dysbiosis, are often associated with pathology, and recent reports indicate that aging...
Biological & Health Sciences Engineering, Design & TechnologiesEllen Simms - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Introduced plants can become invasive when they escape the insect and microbial enemies that control native plant populations. Legumes benefit from symbiotic relationships with nitrogen-fixing bacteria called rhizobia, which colonize nodules in legume roots. We have found that three invasive leguminous plant species (French broom, Spanish broom, and Scotch...
Biological & Health SciencesEllen Simms - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: Off Campus
Until recently there was still the idea that when it comes to the microbial world, since it is so small, everything must be everywhere. Much current research is showing this claim does not hold water. Few things are truly everywhere and most things, even on the micro scale, have very...
Biological & Health SciencesEllen Simms - Professor, Integrative Biology
Status: Full- no new appr needed Weekly Hours: to be negotiated Location: On Campus
Bacteriophages (phages, for short) are viruses that attack and kill bacteria. Phages tend to be host specific (specialize on particular bacteria), which allows them to influence bacterial community composition. Legumes are plants that benefit from symbiotic relationships with nitrogen-fixing bacteria called rhizobia, which colonize nodules in legume roots. Rhizobia...
Biological & Health Sciences