New tools helping protect world’s threatened species
New tools to collect and share information could help stem the loss of the world?s threatened species, according to a paper published today in the journal Science. The study, by an international team of scientists that included John L. Gittleman, dean of the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology, was led by Stuart L. Pimm of Duke University and Clinton N. Jenkins of the Instituto de Pesquisas Ecol?gicas in Brazil.
UGA Awards student scholarships for Study Abroad in Sustainability
Undergraduate ecology major Zack Holmes has received one of two scholarships for study abroad opportunities in sustainability. The awards are made possible by the Brittney Fox Watts Memorial Endowment .
As climate, disease links become clearer, study highlights need to forecast future shifts
Climate change is affecting the spread of infectious diseases worldwide, according to an international team of leading disease ecologists, with serious impacts to human health and biodiversity conservation. Writing in the journal Science, they propose that modeling the way disease systems respond to climate variables could help public health officials and environmental managers predict and mitigate the spread of lethal diseases.
Connections found between wetland cover, transmission rates of hemorrhagic disease in white-tailed deer
Ecologists at the University of Georgia have discovered complex and surprising relationships between land cover and rates of transmission, illness and death from hemorrhagic disease in white-tailed deer.
UGA Ecology “Parasite Ladies” Take Second Place in NSF Graduate Education Challenge
Dara Satterfield, Sarah Budischak, and Sara Heisel, doctoral students in the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology, have taken second place honors in the National Science Foundation Innovation in Graduate Education Challenge, the NSF announced on June 13, 2013.
UGA ecologist receives $1.39 million to study longleaf pine ecosystem recovery
UGA ecosystem ecologist Nina Wurzburger has received a $1.39 million grant from the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program of the U.S. Department of Defense in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to study how the soil-based process of nitrogen fixation facilitates recovery from physical disturbances in longleaf pine ecosystems.
Virtual Wildlife
Students in the First-Year Odyssey ecology seminar ?Great Ape Behavior and Conservation? experience “a study-abroad experience in a classroom.?
“Think globally, act locally” also applies to extinction
Study finds considerable regional variation in the impacts of extinction on biodiversity When a species becomes extinct, its loss has an impact on global biodiversity. But a new study by University of Georgia researchers has found that species extinctions may have even greater impacts at the regional level, depending upon how closely related the lost species are to others nearby.
Location matters: For invasive aquatic species, it’s better to start upstream
Researchers have found that a species invasion that starts at the upstream edge of its range may have a major advantage over downstream competitors, at least in environments with a strong prevailing direction of water or wind currents.
UGA study links land use with spread of West Nile virus
Researchers at the University of Georgia have developed a mathematical model showing a link between land cover pattern and the spatial spread of West Nile virus in New York City.