REU Site: Ecology, Evolution, and Equity in Environmental Change (4EC)

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

This REU Site award to the University of California, Davis, located in Davis, CA, will support the training of nine students for eight weeks during the summers of 2025—2027. Research will be conducted on the UC Davis campus, surburban habitats, adjoining riparian and agricultural reserves in Yolo and Solano Counties, and natural areas in the Sierra Nevada and on the California coast. Twenty-seven students, primarily from schools with limited research opportunities, including recruiting partners Sacramento City College, California State University Sacramento, and Californa State University Fullerton will be trained in the program. The next generation of environmental scientists must be equipped to study phenomena in ecology and evolutionary biology, and communicate with the public, resource managers, and policymakers. The “Ecology, Evolution, and Working Landscapes” REU is designed to accomplish these goals. Many students in this REU site will present the results of their work at scientific conferences. Assessment of this program will be done through an online tool. Students should apply to the REU site using NSF ETAP (Education and Training Application: https://etap.nsf.gov). The “Ecology, Evolution, and Working Landscapes” REU focuses on the ecological and evolutionary effects of changing environmental regimes. Participants will conduct individual research projects co-mentored by UC Davis faculty, graduate students, and faculty at each student’s home institution. Programmatic activities include journal clubs and field trips, training in scientific communication (including filming individual research videos), training in the R scripting language, professional development focused on career exploration and preparation for graduate study. Research questions encompass challenges that organisms and ecosystems face due to rapid environmental change, especially in urban, agricultural, and natural systems. Faculty mentors are drawn from biology departments across UC Davis, with research approaches that incorporate field work, controlled experiments, greenhouse or laboratory observations, genetic/genomic tools, and modeling. Students will be selected using holistic review; prior research experience is not required. For more information, see https://ecoevoreu.ucdavis.edu or contact Principal Investigator Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra (rossibarra@ucdavis.edu) or co-Principal Investigator Anne Todgham (todgham@ucdavis.edu). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.