UCMP has been extremely fortunate to receive donations in the form of endowments from individuals dedicated to the support of graduate student training, research and fieldwork. Each year we use the earnings from these endowments to make research awards to our graduate students; we are proud to announce the 2014-2015 recipients and offer them our congratulations!
From the Dorothy K. Palmer Fund:
Lindsey Dougherty to better understand the evolution of the blue flashing display behavior in Ctenoides ales, the "disco clam," through the examination of phylogenetic traits and transmission electron microscopy.
Jenny Hofmeister to deploy acoustic transmitters for tracking the movement and behavior of two sympatric species of octopods in southern California kelp forests.
Camilla Souto to visit the Invertebrate Zoology and Paleobiology collections at the Smithsonian Institution for analysis of the external morphology of echinoids and to collect samples for molecular analysis.
From the Doris O. and Samuel P. Welles Fund:
Natalia Villavicencio to examine Quaternary megafauna from South America in the Anthropology and Vertebrate Zoology collections of the American Museum of Natural History and to select samples for radiocarbon dating.
From the Joseph T. Gregory Fellowship:
Allison Stegner to survey modern and fossil mammal communities in the Colorado Plateau in order to establish a baseline of diversity and assess impacts of grazing on community ecosystems.
From the Remington Kellogg Fund:
Jenny Hofmeister to track the movements of adult octopuses from two sympatric species and use paleontological data to determine the ecological conditions of the lineage through time.
From the Annie Alexander Fund:
Lindsey Dougherty for SCUBA-based research in Indonesia combined with museum sampling in order to quantify predation instances in Ctenoides ales, the "disco clam."
Elizabeth Ferrer to continue her studies of fossil and extant varanid specimens and for analysis of the interaction of morphological disparity and diversity in varanids.
UCMP was also able to offer UCMP Graduate Student Research Grants to the following students:
Rosemary Romero for molecular sequencing of the green alga Ulva, as part of a larger study of abiotic and biotic factors affecting the reproductive capabilities of algal blooms in rocky intertidal communities.
Tripti Bhattacharya for analysis of stable isotopes, pollen, and elemental geochemistry in Holocene lake sediment cores from eastern Mexico.
Dori Contreras for field sampling projects in Cretaceous plant assemblages in the McRae Formation of New Mexico.
Winnie Hsiung for pollen analyses of samples from Clear Lake and additional computational research at the palynology lab at College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, UK.
Claire Englander Student Prize
Awarded to grad students working with the collections, this new prize goes to Elizabeth Ferrer. Liz worked on the CLIR grant to catalog the museum archives and helped with UCMP visitors and the use of research specimens. She also served as an advisor to an undergraduate researcher, organized several morphometrics workshops, and has been active in Bay Area science education and outreach programs.