Project Mentors & Areas
Faculty research interests:
Faculty Member |
Project Area |
Elizabeth J. Walsh |
Evolutionary Genetics and Ecology of Freshwater Invertebrates |
Vanessa L. Lougheed |
Ecosystem Ecology of Desert and Arctic Environments, Nutrient Limitation of Primary Production |
Jennie McLaren |
Plant Community and Ecosystem Ecology |
Michael L. Moody |
Botany, Evolution and Genomics |
Philip Lavretsky |
Population and Evolutionary Genetics |
Elizabeth LaRue |
Ecosystem Science, Remote Sensing, Plant Species Distributions and Structural Diversity of Ecosystems |
Vicente Mata-Silva |
Field Biology, Herpetology, Desert Ecology |
Brett Seymoure |
Animal behavior, Sensory Ecology, Light Pollution, Predator-Prey, Entomology |
Michael J. Harvey |
Diversity, Evolution and Genomics of Birds |
Lixin Jin |
Chemical, physical, and biological processes in natural and managed in drylands |
Project Details
Proposed Projects:
Exploring biodiversity patterns of rock pools in extreme habitats in Finland and the desert southwest USA using eDNA sequencing and rehydration experiments.
Mentees will collect samples regionally to characterize micro-invertebrate communities of rock pools with a focus on tardigrades and rotifers. Projects will focus on metacommunity assemblages and gene flow among populations. Species will be characterized using genomics, SEM and light microscopy.
Potential work with a university partner from the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Effect of a changing climate on nutrient limitation and growth of algae in Arctic aquatic ecosystems and sea ice.
This project will enhance work as part of the Beaufort Lagoon Ecosystems LTER and may include fieldwork in northern Alaska and lab-based incubations of algae under different experimental treatments. Potential to work with university partners from Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences.
Biogeochemical impacts of changing arctic plant communities.
Mentee projects will examine the consequences of changing plant communities in tundra. Mentees will conduct fieldwork at Toolik Field Station in Alaska, collecting plant data and soil from long-term experiments under the direction of McLaren and other investigators from the Toolik Long Term Research group. Soils will be taken back to the McLaren lab at UTEP where mentees will learn biogeochemical analyses.
Plant phenology and genomics in a changing Arctic.
In Collaboration with Ned Fetcher (Wilkes University). This project will provide an opportunity to work on NSF funded Collaborative Research with scientists from multiple institutions (OPP 2109946). The project has opportunities to pursue a project that could include summer fieldwork at the remote Toolik Field Station in Alaska to collect data on plant phenology and examining plant materials brought back to the labs at UTEP for genomic work exploring genes that may be involved in leaf phenology processes.
Population structure of Mexican ducks and Mallards of Southwestern USA.
Mentees on this project will take part in a new field site in southern Arizona where Lavretsky and team are beginning to shed light into habitat use, population structure, and hybridization among locally breeding mallards and endemic Mexican ducks. Students will have the opportunity to get hands-on experience in capture methods, handling, banding, and attaching telemetry units on live waterfowl in the field, as well as the latest genomic techniques as part of the Lavretsky Lab at UTEP. Mentees will have the chance to analyze habitat, movement, and molecular data to increase our understanding of breeding populations in Southwestern USA, especially of the relatively unknown Mexican duck that was recently elevated to full species.
The structural diversity and habitat characterization of micro to macro dryland ecosystems.
This project will work toward characterizing the landscape patterns of ecosystem structural diversity of dryland communities and habitat. The post-bac will learn how to collect field data with drones and computational programs to analyze geospatial data. Potential projects include characterizing biocrust or vegetation structural diversity across NEON sites in the desert southwest, drone-based monitoring of forest restorations after elk overgrazing and wildfires, or the remote sensing of wildlife habitat in the Chihuahuan Desert. Potential to work with university partners from New Mexico State University.
Ecological and physiological aspects of reptile populations living in the Chihuahuan Desert.
This project involves the study of stress levels of rattlesnakes in their natural environment through the use of radio telemetry and biologging. Variables such as movement behavior, home range, habitat, and stress levels are analyzed in conjunction with environmental parameters. The student will gain experience doing both field and laboratory work with native herpetofauna and use of statistical programs.
Examining how light cycles and artificial light at night disrupt the visual and behavioral ecology of terrestrial arthropods and their prey.
Dr. Seymoure runs the visual and behavioral ecology lab at UTEP. His lab focuses on understanding how natural light cycles have driven biodiversity and how artificial light is impacting organisms. Organisms have evolved under natural light cycles for millennia and use these consistent clues to time activity as well as provide adequate lighting conditions for foraging and avoiding predators. However, due to artificial light at night, organisms have much of their biology disrupted. The student for this project will investigate how light underlies diversity and abundance of terrestrial arthropods through predator-prey mechanisms and visually guided behavior. The student will learn advanced techniques in entomology, predator-prey field experiments, survival and diversity analysis, R, and techniques for measuring ecologically relevant lighting.
How the environment shapes diversity, and how can both diversity and natural evolutionary processes be protected in the face of environmental change.
The Harvey lab studies the evolution of bird diversity at both large and small scales. We use phylogenetics and diversification models to understand how species diversity accumulates across geographic areas and among lineages. We also study the earliest stages of diversity formation across populations and between incipient species. We use a combination of field studies, genomic data, population genetic analyses, and phylogenetic comparative methods in our work. Many of the birds we work with live in the Neotropics (Central and South America) or the desert Southwest.
Examining the Soil-Atmosphere C Exchange in Natural and Irrigated Dryland Ecosystems.
Pedogenic carbonates form in natural drylands worldwide, and have been studied intensively, including morphology, deposition mechanisms and accumulation rates. Pedogenic carbonate develops because dissolved bicarbonate and calcium react to form calcite, carbon dioxide and water:
2HCO3- + Ca2+ → CaCO3(s) + CO2(g) + H2O Rxn (1)
Formation of pedogenic carbonate is intrinsically linked to emission of CO2. However, such release of CO2 to the atmosphere has not been directly measured, partially because this is a small flux due to the slow accumulation rates of pedogenic carbonates. When natural ecosystems are converted to agricultural fields in drylands, soils are intensively irrigated, loading salts and leading to elevated soil salinity. Similarly, irrigation delivers significant amounts of Ca2+ and HCO3- to these soils continuously and enhances both pedogenic carbonate formation and soil-atmosphere CO2 emission. To date, however, only few studies have measured the associated emission flux of CO2 in such agricultural settings. The student will explore the spatial and temporal variability and the dominant controls of such abiotic CO2 efflux. They will have the opportunity to work on a variety of soil sensors, soil/gas/water sample collection and characterization, and statistical and spatial data analysis, as well as education and outreach activities.
Mentors From Partnering Institutions
Funding Acknowledgment
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number BIO DBI 2319855.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.