Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Ashleigh Smythe spent five days in July on board the Robert C. Seamans, the Sea Education Association’s 134-foot research sailing schooner. The ship sailed out of San Francisco Bay, north to Drakes Bay, around the Farallon Islands, and finally docked in Monterey, Calif. More ...

Ernest Williams, the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Biology, recently published a journal article, co-authored with collaborators from Sweet Briar College and Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. The article, "Oyamel fir forest trunks provide thermal advantages for overwintering monarch butterflies in Mexico," appeared in Insect Conservation and Diversity 2:163-175. More ...

Ernest Williams, the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Biology, recently attended the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Albuquerque, N.M, where he gave a talk titled "Habitat change and population loss and gain in a montane butterfly." This talk summarized research he has conducted over the past 25 years on Gillett's Checkerspot butterfly in the Rocky Mountains; the distribution of this species has changed as the meadows they inhabit have been altered by climate change, forest fire, and vegetative succession.

Also, Williams had an article published in American Butterflies (vol. 17, pages 4-13; summer 2009 issue) titled "Lifestyles of the scaled and beautiful: Pearl and Northern Crescents." For a number of years, Williams and students have conducted research on Pearl Crescent butterflies and their host plants, with parallel studies being run from a chemical viewpoint by Silas D. Childs Professor of Chemistry Robin Kinnel and his students. More ...

Jen Santoro ’11 enjoyed catching frogs and spending time outside when she was younger, and has an affinity for nature still. Her love for plant life and for creatures flitting from tree to tree translated into a desire to be an environmental studies major, with a focus in biology. Her research partner, Gary Bedrosian ’11, also claims to have loved biology ever since he was very small. Together they're working on a project at the Rome Sand Plains with Associate Professor of Biology William Pfitsch. This summer, their goal is to study the relationship between wild blue lupine plants and the Frosted Elfin butterfly, and how different soil types in the area could lead them to more conclusions on the topic. More ...

As a sequel to the biological sampling from earlier in the summer, Kira DesJardins ’10 is taking the next step in identifying the species that inhabit the depths of Green Lakes. Other students have extracted the DNA of organisms in the water samples and prepared them for genetic analysis. DesJardins has created a “clone library” out of the fungal DNA with Professor of Biology Jinnie Garrett. More ...

Meromictic lakes are stratified like layers of cake. They are interesting biological case studies because their surface and bottom waters never mix, and their sediments often date back thousands of years. One example of a meromictic lake is Green Lake located in a New York State Park just east of Syracuse. It was the first lake in North America to be classified as such, and scientists began recording data on it as early as 1839. Sean Linehan ’10 and Elizabeth Pendery ’10 are studying the biological diversity of Green Lake this summer with Associate Professor of Biology Michael McCormick. More ...

Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Ashleigh Smythe spent 10 days in July working at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.  She is currently describing a new species of nematode that she collected from sediment off the coast of Florida. More ...

In mid-sentence, Professor of Biology Ernest Williams interrupted his thought to comment on a bird that caught his eye: "Oh, there's a yellow warbler – male, yellowy, with chestnut stripe on the breast," he observed. Seeing Williams in his element is like reading an interactive encyclopedia – Williams talks animatedly about nature and the creatures that inhabit it, such as painted turtles, blue herons and Canada geese. He is conducting what is called a "BioBlitz" this summer with Carly Andrascik '11, an environmental studies major. More ...

The LARISSA team met at National Science Foundation for a Principal Investigators meeting on May 5 and 6 in Washington, D.C. LARISSA is a National Science Foundation-funded initiative that joins an international, interdisciplinary team together to address a significant regional problem with global change implications, the abrupt environmental change in Antarctica's Larsen Ice Shelf System. Lead Principal Investigator (PI) and Project Director Eugene Domack, the J. W. Johnson Family Professor of Environmental Studies, and Principal Investigator and Associate Professor of Biology Michael McCormick attended along with several representatives from National Geographic Magazine. More ...

Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Ashleigh Smythe spent one week in January on the southern Caribbean island of Tobago (Republic of Trinidad and Tobago) collecting marine nematodes. Her work was sponsored by the Buccoo Reef Trust, a non-profit agency whose goal is to promote research and education about Caribbean coral reefs and marine habitats. More ...