These awards recognize excellence represented within the graduate community and celebrates students for their accomplishments; the awards presented at the celebration honor members of the community who have demonstrated leadership and commitment to advancing efforts around diversity, inclusion, outreach and student engagement.
Pipkin, a doctoral student in the Vitousek lab, received a predoctoral competition fellowship: “With this fellowship, I will have the freedom to not only focus on my research about iridescence but continue my endeavors in creating a more inclusive and diverse STEM culture, specifically as it pertains to fieldwork."
EEB staff member Patty Jordan and faculty member Andre Kessler were among 20 faculty and professional staff members in four of Cornell’s state contract colleges have been selected for the 2020–21 SUNY Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence.
“Declining Diversity of Wild-Caught Species Puts Dietary Nutrient Supplies at Risk,” published May 28 in Science Advances, focused on the Loreto region of the Peruvian Amazon, where inland fisheries provide a critical source of nutrition for the 800,000 inhabitants.
In the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) we value science and education grounded in the natural history of organisms, and have a desire to understand the patterns and processes that structure communities and ecosystems, and drive evolutionary change over all geographical and time scales. As new methods allow us to gain insight into ecological and evolutionary mechanism and function, we seek to refine fundamental concepts, to integrate findings into novel theory, and to contribute to solutions for environmental challenges. As a place of work, EEB is dynamic and friendly, committed to antiracism, and to be a safe space without harassment or discrimination of any sort, and to be as inclusive as possible (see our Diversity and Inclusion web page).
EEB faculty, students and staff pursue topics across a broad set of interlinked foci, including biogeochemistry and ecosystem science, community ecology and population biology, sustainability, environment and conservation, organismal biology, intimate organismal interactions and chemical ecology, evolutionary patterns and processes, and biological educational research. Follow this link to view Our Department in Action gallery.
Photo on left: Geber Lab, Clarkia species flowers in an experimental array for pollinator observations by Aubrie James.
Photo on right: Searle Lab research, wild house mouse (Mus musculus domesticus) by Michael Amphlett.
During summer 2020, Drew Harvell, postdoc Lillian Aoki and Ph.D. student Olivia Graham traveled to the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington state to study the pathogenic causes of seagrass wasting disease. Similar to how COVID-19 has swept through society, marine disease agents — like viruses, bacteria and protists — can have massive impacts that ripple through ecosystems. The triggers for epidemics in nature are just as complex, involving a combination of variables such as host stress, environmental conditions and changes in biological communities. Read "Hunting eelgrass disease in the San Juan Islands" for the full story.
“As a result of identity prejudice, certain individuals are more vulnerable to conflict and violence when they are in the field. It is paramount that all fieldworkers be informed of the risks some colleagues may face, so that they can define best practice together.” Amelia-Juliette Demery and Monique Pipkin: Safe fieldwork strategies for at-risk individuals, their supervisors and institutions. Nat Ecol Evol (2020).