EEB Program Mission

OUR VISION

Our vision is to become a program recognized at the national and international level for its expertise in ecological and evolutionary science, and for training the next generation of scientists, with diverse and underrepresented backgrounds, that will become future leaders in their field.

OUR MISSION

Our mission is to provide an intellectually stimulating training environment in ecological and evolutionary science for future scientists and societal leaders that focuses on research that challenges and/or improves current theory and knowledge and has the capacity to be relevant to society.

MAJOR RESEARCH THEMES

BIODIVERSITY

The planet has a rich and dynamic biodiversity. Much of this diversity has yet to be fully characterized or under-stood; this is especially true in extreme environments such as the Chihuhuan Desert and associated sky islands. There are a number of compeling cultural, ethical, economic and intellectual reasons for understanding patterns and processes underlying biodiversity and how human activities are affecting them. Doctoral students participating in this focal area will conduct research in areas such as:

• Bioinformatics
• Systematics
• Invasive Species and hybridization
• Phylogeography
• Phylogenetics and population genetics
• Conservation Biology
• Theoretical and applied population biology
• Environmental Toxicology

GLOBAL CHANGE ECOLOGY

Dramatic human and environmental change is altering the world in which we live. Changes manifest from a range of drivers such as natural and anthropogenic disturbance and pollution andaffect biotic structure and function over multiple spatial and temporal scales. By their very nature, deserts and other extreme environments are poorly buffered against such impacts, and they thus provide a suite of natural laboratories for understanding how feed-backs from ecological changes may be positively reinforcing processes associated with global change. As such, critical tipping points have likely been passed and management and other practices focused on reversing such trends present key research challenges. Doctoral students participating in this focal area will conduct research in areas such as:

• Aquatic ecology
• Biogeochemical cycling
• Biogeography
• Ecoinformatics
• Ecophysiology Landscape
• Ecology Molecular Ecology
• Community and Population Ecology