Project Areas & Mentors

Overview:

Research in the Darrouzet-Nardi lab examines how plants, soils, microbes, and biological soil crusts interact to regulate carbon and nutrient cycling in dryland ecosystems. We study these processes across scales, from individual organisms to whole landscapes, and participate in international distributed experiments, including CrustNet and work within the Critical Zone network. Our research combines field ecology, biogeochemistry, and environmental data science to understand how arid systems respond to climate variability, disturbance, and long-term environmental change.

Proposed project:

The student will help scout, establish, and implement a new CrustNet (crustnet.org) sampling node at the UTEP Indio Mountain Research Station (IMRS). They will carry out the full Tier 1 sampling protocol and initiate Tier 2 and Tier 3 measurements, generating foundational data for this site. The project will involve fieldwork to collect biocrust, soil, and vegetation information, along with laboratory work to process and analyze samples. Depending on the student’s interests, the project can emphasize biocrust ecology, plant-soil interactions, or disturbance and climate sensitivity. The student will gain experience identifying common Chihuahuan Desert plant and biocrust organisms and will learn core methods in dryland field sampling, soil and microbial analysis, and data interpretation.

Remote sensing to understand desert plant-water relationships across landscapes

The goal of this project is to study how the spatial distribution of plants and shrubs aboveground and their roots belowground are influenced by competition for water, one of the most scarce resources for plants to survive in deserts. Prospective students can learn how to use remote sensing and GIS data to measure shrub cover and structure, as well as techniques to measure root location and biomass in the northern Chihuahuan Desert at the Jornada Experimental Range. Students can study to take the FAA Part 107 drone pilot's license that is federally required to be held by all commercial (including research) drone pilots in the USA. This is a transferable job skill for many environmental and ecologcal field jobs. An interested student may also have the opportunity to contribute to preparing manuscripts with lab members.

Very little is known about the Mexican duck, which is endemic to North America. The Mexican duck ranges from Pueblo, Mexico through the highlands of Mexico and into southern New Mexico. Although estimated around 55,000 individuals, they remain a conservation concern due to habitat loss along with interspecific competition with a sister species, the mallard. The focus of the project will be to fill in important gaps in nesting ecology and habitat use of Mexican ducks. Specifically, potential REU students will work in several wetland areas around the greater El Paso region to find and track breeding females and nest success. Students will also be exposed to collection methods and colleting of wild Mexican ducks and mallards in order to band, take morphological and phenotypic measurements, and obtain blood for genetic analyses. Students will obtain experience working with wild birds, an understanding of and contribution to the ecology of a poorly understood species, and the importance of collected banding and genetic data in regards to conservation, in general.

Dr. Lougheed is head of UTEP’s Aquatic Ecology Lab. Research in her lab focuses on nutrient cycling (N, P, C); bioindicator development using plants, invertebrates and algae; and the use of remote sensing in monitoring ecosystem change. REU students could participate in projects examining how aquatic macroinvertebrates and plants respond to ecosystem change within a local wetland restoration site, Rio Bosque, or in regional river ecosystems.

Shrub encroachment threatens Chihuahuan Desert grasslands. Understanding seed dispersal can inform restoration. Are grassland species arriving but failing to establish, or not arriving at all? By understanding this we can assess if seed addition is required or if other measures like shrub removal must be taken to ensure native species establishment. Using seed traps and soil cores in the Chihuahuan Desert, we will quantify species dispersal in pristine and encroached grasslands than can inform management plans.

Overview:

Dr. Moody’s research focuses on Botany and the evolution, distribution, and molecular ecology of plants in select ecosystems. This research also involves collaboration with the UTEP Herbarium and Chihuahuan Desert Garden. The research topics studied in the Moody Evolution Lab include: distribution mapping, systematics, conservation genetics, plant DNA fingerprinting or population genetic techniques in desert ecosystems and population genetics of invasive plant species.

Project:

The project will be conducted examining distribution of plant species complexes across the “sky islands” and other mountain ranges in the Chihuahuan Desert. The project will involve field collection and genetic/genomic techniques to examine geographic patterns and systematics of a select group of plants in the region. The project may also involve some training in the use of GIS.

The Padilla Applied Wildlife Science (PAWs) group works does applied research aimed at understanding what factors influence the distribution and dynamics of wildlife populations. Students will have the opportunity to work on projects that attempt to disentangle the relative importance of biotic and abiotic drivers in determining the structure of mammal species communities along natural (e.g., elevation, hydrological) and anthropogenic (e.g., land use, urbanization) landscape gradients. Mentees will have the opportunity to monitor mammal communities using taxa-specific methods (e.g., camera traps for ungulates and meso-carnivores, and camera boxes for small mammals), collect relevant landscape data, and will learn appropriate statistical methods to analyze landscape composition and evaluate drivers of species distribution and relative abundance.

Project:

This research project will be a major step towards understanding more precisely the soil taxa and soil community types involved in carbon storage. Soils contain an immense amount of biodiversity that supports terrestrial ecosystems and benefits humans worldwide. Yet, soil biodiversity is threatened by major changes in land-use, and by increased incidence of extreme weather events as a result of current climate change. This is worrying because soils support the terrestrial carbon cycle by carbon sequestration, which is pivotal for climate regulation. The overall balance of carbon in soils is controlled by the interactive effects of climate, vegetation composition and soil biodiversity, but this sensitive balance is threatened by soil biodiversity degradation as a result of intensified drought. A more complete assessment of soil biodiversity responses to climate change is needed to predict responses and identify potential management options to conserve soil biodiversity and soils services. Using combination of long-term field experimentation and global scale soil biodiversity assessment this project will quantify and map local and regional patterns of soil biodiversity and carbon storage in connection with soil health under extreme drought events brought on by climate change. Specifically, the student will use DNA based analyses to examine soil biodiversity and its functional potential combined with measurements of microbial activity and carbon turnover. The outcomes of this project will facilitate the transfer of ecological research for informing on ways to enhance the stability of soil systems (for both biodiversity and carbon storage) under climate change and land degradation. The research project will culminate in presentation of a poster at the end of the program and potential co-authorship on a research paper that will come from the findings.

Overview

Light is one of the most important abiotic factors driving biological functions. Animals have evolved under consistent light cycles: day to night, across the lunar cycle, and seasonal changes in day length. However, these natural and consistent light cycles are being destroyed through artificial lighting at night. The alterations to natural light cycles results in myriad behavioral alterations across species, which ultimately is dependent upon an organism’s traits. Changes in lighting can lead to different activity patterns, different morphology, and different sensory perception of an individual’s environment. We are currently investigating how disruption to natural light cycles affects visual traits, predator-prey dynamics, and behavior in arthropods (mostly spiders, bees, moths and butterflies).

Proposed Project:

The student will be involved in projects related to the impacts of artificial light and/or natural lighting on arthropod behavior and morphology. Specific projects will be decided and agreed upon with the student, graduate students, and Dr. Seymoure.

Dr. Walsh’s lab focuses on the evolution and ecology of freshwater invertebrates, especially of Chihuahuan Desert zooplankton. Her lab investigates how species adapt to temporary habitats in aridlands and how these adaptations lead to genetic differentiation and speciation.

Proposed Projects:

1. Investigating how invertebrates dispersal and colonize aquatic habitats in aridlands. In a past REU project, students constructed artificial ponds (mesocosms) at a local state park and monitored species colonization. Students will replicate and expand this experiment. The mesocom design will enable us to determine the relative roles of wind and insects in facilitating dispersal of the dormant stages of aquatic invertebrates. We will also monitor species diversity in sediment eggs banks in surrounding ponds as well as in dust collected on-site. Students will learn experimental design, how to identify common zooplankton colonists, and how succession occurs in temporary habitats.
2. Investigating life history adaptations to temporary habitats. Students will determine key life history features of selected zooplankton that inhabit ponds that vary in their permanence. For instance, production of a resting stage is critical in temporary habitats to ensure persistence of the population through drought. Students will determine whether populations from temporary habitats have higher diapause stage production than their counterparts in more permanent habitats. A variety of other features can also be tested (uv tolerance, desiccation resistance, timing of sexual reproduction).
3. Investigating biodiversity and cryptic speciation. Lake Lucero located at White Sands National Monument is a remnant of an ancient lakebed, geochemically distinctive and geographically isolated. These three features combine to facilitate speciation. Recently, we isolated four morphologically distinct forms of the rotifer Brachionus plicatilis co-occurring in the lake. This species can be the dominant member of the zooplankton and thus an important contributor to its production and transfer of energy to higher trophic levels. Students will use both molecular tools (DNA sequencing) and lab experiments (microcosm competition experiments) to explore genetic variation and ecological differentiation among these morphotypes.
4. Investigating the Tree of Life using molecular tools. Rotifers are an enigmatic group of zooplankton. Although they are very important in nutrient cycling and trophic interactions in most freshwater habitats, little is known regarding their phylogenetic position. Students will use molecular techniques and morphometric analyses to investigate the phylogenetic position of a genus of sessile or colonial rotifers. Students will collect field samples from springs in Big Bend National Park and other regional state and national parks. They will then isolate, amplify and sequence DNA from a chosen taxon. Students will learn how to construct phylogenetic trees from DNA sequence data. This project will contribute to a larger project recently funded by the National Science Foundation.