SPOTLIGHT | NEWSROOM

IN THE NEWS:

• The State University of New York at Stony Brook (Stony Brook University) Department of Ecology & Evolution in the College of Arts & Sciences and Turkana Basin Institute Assistant Professor Tara Smiley was named a 2026 Sloan Research Fellow. This fellowship honors exceptional early-career researchers at United States and Canadian educational institutions, whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders. 126 researchers were selected this year.
• Our warmest congratulations to graduate student Sixto Taveras Lopez, who was selected for the Dr. W. Burghardt Turner Dissertation Fellowship, and masters students Tamia Tabourn and Ashanti Palmer who also received competitive fellowships through CIE.  We congratulate Yijie Tian on her successful defense. 
• "Fresh off the press: The newest Ecology and Evolution newsletter has arrived!" You can read the  online version here.
• Dr. Pascal Title, We are excited to welcome Pascal Title to the Ecology and Evolution department at Stony Brook University! Pascal is a leading evolutionary macroecologist whose research integrates geographic distributions, phylogenies, and trait data to understand global diversity patterns. His work will be a valuable asset to our department, and we look forward to his contributions to our research and teaching programs.
• Anita Mary George, a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellow in the Department of Ecology and Evolution! Anita was recently featured in IndiaBioscience's "10 Women, 10 Questions" feature, where she shared insight into her current research.
• DavalosLab is one of 16 researchers in the inaugural cohort of #Fulbright#Amazonia! Together, they will use research to address regional challenges Stony Brook University.
• The Lynch Lab was featured on the cover of this month's National Geographic Kids. Details no longer available on the web.
• Genetic Analysis Unlocks Secrets of Bat “Superpowers”. Liliana M. Dávalos, a Stony Brook University evolutionary biologist and co-author, worked as part of the executive committee of the global consortium of scientists, Bat1K, to sequence the genome of six widely divergent living bat species.
• Bat Study Could Provide Clues to Coronavirus by Liliana Dávalos. A new study led by Stony Brook’s Liliana Dávalos will investigate why some bat species seem to carry coronaviruses but are rarely affected by them.
• SBU Researchers Collaborate on Genetic Tool Development in Marine Protists. For the past several years, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences Associate Professor Jackie Collier and PhD candidate Mariana Rius, along with Associate Professor Joshua Rest from the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Ecology and Evolution, developed the tools and methodology for genetically transforming a single-celled marine fungus-like organism known as Aurantiochytrium limacinum ATCC MYA-1381.
• Heather Lynch has been selected as a 2020-2021 AAAS Lesher Leadership Institute Fellow for Science Engagement. Lynch has pioneered the use of satellite imagery for studying the distribution and abundance of Antarctic seabirds and published the first Antarctic-wide satellite-based surveys of both Adélie penguins and Antarctic petrels.
• Veeramah Awarded ERC Funding to Study DNA from Medieval Europe. Krishna R. Veeramah will be continuing his pioneering research into ancient DNA with funding from a $10 million grant awarded by the European Research Council (ERC).
• Dr. Lynch, the finalist for the 2019 Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists. Dr. Lynch is a quantitative ecologist who monitors Antarctic penguin populations using field surveys in concert with satellite imagery that can track the size of penguin colonies on the ground.
• A NASA-funded team recently unlocked some long-standing secrets about the Adélie penguin, a species that can provide an early-warning of threats to Antarctica's delicate ecosystem. Lynch’s project was funded by NASA’s Applied Sciences Program. Youngflesh’s efforts were funded through a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship award.
• Forty years of meta-analysis: We need evidence-based answers https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25753 more than ever (Jessica Gurevitch). Forty years ago, the introduction of modern meta-analysis brought the scientific method to reviews and syntheses of research results from multiple studies. The consequences of its widespread adoption have fundamentally changed the way scientists view scientific information, and ushered in an era of evidence-based decisions and the resolution of fundamental questions in medicine, ecology, psychology and many other fields.
• A Supercolony of Penguins Has Been Found Near Antarctica / Interview Video on CBS. More than a million Adélie penguins found on Antarctic islands. Stony Brook Professor of Ecology and Evolution Heather Lynch was one of the senior authors of the study and joins CBSN to discuss how the colony went unnoticed.
• STRIDE Fellows Translate Research Into Policy. At Stony Brook, STRIDE (Science Training and Research to Inform Decisions) aims to meet that challenge by providing STEM graduate students with the interdisciplinary skills they need to communicate their findings and make positive change.
• Investment Portfolio Theory Helps Scientists Predict Animal Population Growth, Disease Spread. The paper, co-authored by Stony Brook’s Jessica Gurevitch, PhD, a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution in the College of Arts and Sciences, melds Harry Markowitz’s “portfolio theory” in economics with ecological landscape theory to predict population growth of living things.
• NASA-Funded Competition Rewards Efforts To Predict Penguin Populations. Lynch’s laboratory has developed a NASA-funded web tool, Mapping Application for Penguin Populations and Projected Dynamics (MAPPPD), which allows anyone, from fisheries managers to citizen scientists, to check on the population data available for the four species of Antarctic penguins and make forecasts for future trends.
• SoMAS Professors Share Expertise and Advocacy on Hudson Fisheries. Professors Jeffrey Levinton, Joseph Warren and Michael Frisk journeyed to Washington, DC in conjunction with the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, a Beacon, New York-based grassroots organization founded by Pete Seeger.
• Study Sheds Light on Dog Origins in E&E Veeramah Lab. By analyzing the DNA of two prehistoric dogs from Germany, an international research team led by Krishna R. Veeramah, PhD, Assistant Professor of Ecology & Evolution in the College of Arts & Sciences at Stony Brook University, has determined that their genomes were the probable ancestors of modern European dogs.