It’s awards season, and our lab members have received some very prestigious grants and fellowships to support their research. Amanda Meier received a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, joining Katherine Crocker as a recipient of one of these highly competitive five-year awards.   Amanda also received a Winnifred Chase Fellowship from the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and an Emma J. Cole Fellowship from EEB to help support her upcoming field research. Many congratulations, Amanda!

In addition to holding a GRF from the NSF, Katherine Crocker recently received the Susan Lipschutz Award from the Rackham Graduate School, an E.S. George Reserve Scholarship Award, and a Theodore J. Cohn Research Award from the Orthopterists’ Society. These awards will allow Katherine to expand her research on the mechanisms by which parental environment influences offspring life history traits. Katherine’s plans include a new field study of environmental influences on hormone provisioning in the eggs of native crickets. Way to go Katherine!

Leslie Decker has received support from the Marian P. and David M. Gates Graduate Student Fund at the University of Michigan Biological Station. Coupled with Barr-Bigelow Research Funds from EEB, Leslie’s funding will allow her to continue exploring the effects of environmental change on parasite-host interactions in monarch butterflies. We are very grateful to the Gates family for their generous support – David Gates was Director of UMBS from 1971 to 1986. Thanks Prof Gates and well done, Leslie!

Johanna Nifosi has been awarded Peter Olaus Okkelberg funds to begin a research project on the effects of increasing global temperature on parasite-host interactions. Johanna will explore how projected increases in temperature during the breeding season of monarch butterflies may influence the virulence and transmission potential of their protozoan parasite. Congratulations Johanna!

As a group, we are very grateful for continued research support and thank the organizations and individuals who make our work possible. We’re looking forward to another exciting and productive research season.