Dr. Sydne Record, UMaine Dept. of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology Leveraging a Network of Networks to Enable Innovations in Macroecology hosted by Víctor Ortega-Jiménez We are at an exciting moment in the discipline of ecology with federal and global investments in ecological observatory networks broadly distributed across space and, for some networks, time. This […]

Dr. Richard Jagels, Professor Emeritus, UMaine School of Forest Resources Tall-Tree Forests: Bioengineering Marvels. What is Their Future? hosted by Víctor Ortega-Jiménez Based on land area, the world’s tallest forests contain the highest biomass, store the most carbon, have the greatest influence on climate, trap the most aerosol pollutants, and host an immense volume of […]

Dr. Elio Challita, Harvard University Microbiotics Laboratory Peeing one drop at a time: How and why sharpshooter insects use superpropulsion to catapult theirfluid excreta Feeding and waste elimination are essential functions for living things. While the impact offeeding on animal form and function has been studied extensively since Darwin, how excretion shapesanimal behavior, size, and […]

Dr. Alejandro Rico-Guevara, University of Washington Behavioral ecophysics and evolutionary correlates of nectarivory A central challenge of biological studies is to describe functional links between underlying architecture (e.g., genotype, phenotype) and emergent phenomena (e.g., performance, ecological patterns). To meet this challenge, it is necessary to identify and quantify causal relationships between variation in traits, such […]

Dr. Suegene Noh, Colby College Facultative symbiont virulence determines horizontal transmission rate without host specificity in social amoebas In facultative symbioses, only a fraction of hosts are associated with symbionts. Specific host and symbiont pairings may be the result of host-symbiont coevolution driven by reciprocal selection, or priority effects pertaining to which potential symbiont became […]

Dr. Juan Romero, UMaine School of Food and Agriculture The impact of PFAS on the forage-herbivore-human continuum According to the EPA, exposure to certain PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) causes serious pathologies in humans. The US EPA current advisory level for PFOS (perflouroctane sulfonate) in drinking water is 0.02 ppt. Based on a previous EPA […]

Dr. Danielle Levesque, University of Maine School of Biology and Ecology Causes and Consequences of Mammalian Heterothermy in a Changing World  

Dr. Fidisoa "Fidy" Rasambainarivo, East Carolina University One Island, One Health: Biodiversity conservation and health at the human domestic animal and wildlife interface in Madagascar In Madagascar, growing contact between […]

Dr. George Jacobson, Professor Emeritus, UMaine Biology and Ecology, and Maine State Climatologist (2007-14) The University of Maine has changed dramatically during the past thirty years and is now a […]

SBE Graduate Student Lightning Talks, featuring: Kwaku Agyekum, Biological Sciences MS student:"Regulation of synapse formation and function in C. elegans." Advisor: Zhao Xuan DeCorey Bolton, Zoology PhD Candidate:"eDNA Metabarcoding to […]