Letter from the Director
During its history, the UCMP has been extremely fortunate to have received donations from individuals dedicated to the support of graduate training and research, especially field work. Their vision and generosity greatly enhance our training program, enabling our students to do exploratory work that is otherwise hard to fund, and we are extremely grateful to them. Each year we use the earnings from these endowments to make research awards to our graduate students, and we are proud to announce this year's recipients and offer congratulations to:
Kaitlin Maguire who receives the Alexander Fellowship to support her research to define how species respond to environmental and climate change by shifts in distribution and habitat preferences.
Sarah Werning who receives the Peabody Fellowship to support her research on the evolution of growth and metabolic rates in living and extinct vertebrates as expressed in bone tissue. Sarah will also receive support from the Joseph T. Gregory fund to support field work at the Hayden Quarry, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico.
Molly Wright who receives the UCMP Fellowship to support her research on the evolution of monogamy in stomatopods.
Jean Alupay receives funding from the Dr. Frank Elmer Peabody Memorial Fellowship to support her studies on the evolution of autotomy (the shedding of a limb or a body part) in cephalopods.
Jessie Atterholt receives support from the Doris O. and Samuel P. Welles Fund, which will allow for 3-D skeletal renderings for use in the geometric-morphometric analysis of several taxa to better understand avian skeletal development.
Jennifer Hofmeister receives support from the Remington Kellogg Research Fund to conduct population surveys of octopuses, their invertebrate prey, and their vertebrate predators to test their correlation.
Emily Lindsey receives support from the Welles fund which will allow her to re-date several now-extinct South American Pleistocene taxa using advanced techniques in order to evaluate the possibility of Holocene persistence of these megafauna in South America.
In addition, UCMP Graduate Student Research Grants have been awarded to:
Joey Pakes who receives support through the Dorothy K. Palmer Memorial Fund to conduct an integrative investigation using stable isotope experiments in the field as well as molecular methods and microscopy of two crustacean classes living in anchialine caves.
Rosemary Romero for DNA analysis that will support her studies regarding temporal availability and abundance of waterborne propagules in coastal and estuarine ecosystems.
Susan Tremblay for field work in New York State's Catskill Delta to collect and analyze specimens of the oldest known (upper middle Devonian) liverwort fossil taxon.
Molly Wright to further her comparative phylogenetic studies with inclusion of anatomical characters.
We are also pleased to announce that UCMP Graduate Student Research positions have been awarded to:
Lucy Chang, Sarah Werning, and Kaitlin Maguire who will be working on the CLIR grant (see cover story) during the summer and fall.
Boran Zhang¸ who will be working in the Invertebrate Paleo collections.
Jean Alupay, who will be working in Education and Outreach.
Sincerely,
Charles Marshall
Director, UCMP
Photo by Jennifer Skene