Projects

2024

Determining the drivers of collective behavior in Veromessor harvester ants at the UC Sedgwick natural reserve 

Awardee: Sean O'Fallon, Ph.D. student in the Pinter-Wollman lab at UCLA. Sean's research focuses on the collective behavior of ant colonies, focusing on the factors that determine behavioral variation within populations and the relationship between ant nest architecture and collective behavior.

2024

Effects of artificial lighting at night on bats in Los Angeles County

Awardee: Lily Rivas, undergraduate student at UCLA under the IoES program pursuing an Environmental Science B.S. and a minor in Conservation Biology.

2024

Effects of interspecific competition on Stephens’ kangaroo rat habitat selection

Awardee: Janine Fischer, Ph.D. candidate co-advised by Dr. Grether and Dr. Shier at UCLA, who is interested in how aggressive interference between species influences their coexistence and habitat use.

2024

Hydraulic function and carbon metabolism of three southern California oak species

Awardee: Anna Ongjoco, Ph.D student co-advised by Dr. Elsa Ordway at UCLA and Dr. Leander Anderegg at UCSB.

2024

Hyperspectral Imaging for California Plant Ecology

Awardee: Nikita Burger, undergraduate student pursuing a B.S. in Computational and Systems Biology at UCLA.

2024

Integrating Environmental DNA and Epigenetics as a Novel Approach for Age Classification of Zebrafish (Danio rerio) as a Model Organism.

Awardee: Madeleine Pacheco, first year PhD student in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department under the supervision of Dr. Paul Barber at UCLA.

2024

Is Prey Availability a Factor in the Decline of a Bat Species in Southern California that is Synanthropic in the Rest of its Range?

Awardee: Jill Carpenter, Ph.D. candidate interested in the roosting and foraging ecology of bats, especially with regard to how various species navigate and utilize the human-altered landscapes of Southern California as well as what traits allow some species to persist while others decline.