LEC Biodiversity News

Missouri Botanical Garden has named international botanist and conservationist Dr. Lúcia G. Lohmann as the Garden’s next President and Director and George Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University in St. Louis. Lohmann will be the eighth president of the Garden and the first woman to hold the position.

KMOV reporter Nathan Vickers talks to Heather Navarro, director of the Midwest Climate Collaborative, and Kim Medley, director of Tyson Research Center, about the impacts of urban heat islands.

Jonathan Losos, a distinguished Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis and the Director of the Living Earth Collaborative, teaches a unique course titled “The Science of Cats” at Washington University. The course has captured the interest of students and cat enthusiasts alike. Listen in as Jonathan discusses this course on Wake Up Call, a program on KFI AM 640.

Jonathan Losos’s course, “The Science of Cats” was featured in the Uncommon Courses series, an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. that highlights unconventional approaches to teaching.

A new study in the journal Ecology Letters suggests that “ornamented” dragonfly species are better able to survive habitat destruction and other human threats. The study’s authors include Michael Moore, a former postdoctoral researcher with the Living Earth Collaborative and Kim Medley, Tyson Research Lab Director.

Forest Park Living Lab is understanding racoon ecology in urban land through GPS tracking and how this work informs One Health programs.

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis (UHSP) contributed to a national study that identifies how gentrified parts of a city have notably more urban wildlife than ungentrified parts of the same city.

What can be done when one threatened animal kills another? Scientists studying critically endangered lemurs in Madagascar confronted this difficult reality when they witnessed attacks on lemurs by another vulnerable species, a carnivore called a fosa.

Meet Charlotte Taylor, a taxonomist at the Missouri Botanical Garden. She’s identified more than 500 new species, more than any other living woman in the field.

Meet Fred, the Canada goose, that has been fitted with a satellite tracking tag as part of the Forest Park Living Lab project which was funded by a LEC Seed grant.

Forest Park Living Lab partners with Gateway to the Great Outdoors (GGO) to bring St. Louis metro students from low income schools to get more students interested in science, nature, and ecology.

WashU researchers at Tyson Research Center use acoustic recorders to detect bats.

Postdoctoral research associate Kara Andres used eDNA to follow invisible trails of genetic information from fish. While her original work probed the Great Lakes, her recent work is focused on microbial communities in local waterways.

With its host of top-rated attractions and miles of bike paths and running trails, Forest Park has enticed generations of WashU community members to step outside the university’s campuses and explore. Today, students and faculty are venturing deeper into the woods to learn about the biodiversity that teems there and to highlight the connectedness between the natural and the human.

Matthew Austin, an ecologist and biodiversity postdoctoral fellow with the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in St. Louis, published a study in the American Journal of Botany that describes changes to the flowering time and other important life cycle events in Leavenworthia species, a group of small flowering plants found in glades in Missouri.

Officials in Argentina are building a statue to recognize the work of Train, a rescue dog who contributed to significant conservation research by a WashU scientist.

LEC post-doc Matt Austin leads research team to examine the role of climate change to discover warmer and drier springs is a major contributor to Leavenworthia blooming earlier.

The Earth is facing two interconnected crises — loss of biodiversity and climate change. Each separately is an enormous threat to life on this planet. However, together they are fueling each other, creating a worsening downward spiral.

Research from Washington University in St. Louis calls for a reappraisal of the process of plant domestication, based on almost a decade of observations and experiments.

From exploring the beach and San Diego Zoo as a kid to studying kissing bugs in Panama as a PhD candidate, Kaylee Arnold’s path in biology has been a long and winding one. Most recently, it has brought her to St. Louis, where she is joining Washington University’s Living Earth Collaborative as a postdoctoral research associate.

This month, the Republic of Congo agreed to protect a 36-square-mile area called Djéké Triangle by making it part of the adjacent Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park. Biodiversity research led by St. Louis scientists helped inform the decision to include the Djéké Triangle in the existing national park.

Learn about the Forest Park Living Lab project that started with LEC Seed grant monies. Experts in wildlife ecology, animal movement and veterinary medicine joined forces in a landmark collaboration to enhance how we understand Forest Park.

Researchers discover elephant extinction could have major impact on atmospheric carbon levels.

A new book by WashU biology professor, Joan E. Strassmann, borrows from the slow food movement to propose a more thoughtful, less competitive form of bird-watching.

St. Louis scientists including LEC postdoctoral fellow, Stella Uiterwaal, collaborate on new study of wildlife in one of America’s greatest urban parks called the Forest Park Living Lab. The Forest Park Living Lab received a LEC seed grant in 2022.

Microbes of Diverse Ecosystems (mDivE-STL) Symposium held on Oct 3 by the Living Earth Collaborative focuses on the important but unseen role of microbes in diverse ecosystems.

Many people believe that climate change is pushing back the start of fall leaf color to later in the year. The general thinking is that the warmer conditions anticipated under climate change will mean that trees can “hang on” to their green, energy-producing leaves longer. But scientists do not actually see this happening across North American forests, according to LEC Biodiversity Fellow, Susanne S. Renner, an expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

Elizabeth Carlen is a postdoctoral fellow with the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in St. Louis. She is studying how city life is changing the local populations of eastern gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis).

The oldest known seeds from a watermelon relative, dating back 6,000 years to the Neolithic period, were found during an archaeological dig in Libya. An investigation of these seeds led by LEC Biodiversity Fellow, biologist Susanne S. Renner at Washington University in St. Louis, reveals some surprises about how our ancestors used a predecessor of today’s watermelon.

Writing in the journal Ecology Letters, Michael Moore, a postdoctoral fellow with the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in St. Louis, and his collaborators Noah Leith and Kasey Fowler-Finn at Saint Louis University (SLU) published a new paper in Ecology Letters.

Climate change is affecting how and when common blue violets reproduce, according to a study of preserved specimens of the flower published last month by the Missouri Botanical Garden and LEC postodotoral fellow, Matthew Austin.

Research from Matthew Austin, a postdoctoral fellow with the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in St. Louis, found that climate change is affecting how the common blue violet, a common native flower, reproduce.

Missouri Ozarks study by WashU narrows in on spatial aspects of biodiversity, homogenization threat to forest ecosystems

Deer, caribou, bison and other similar animals are often infected by a range of internal parasites, including worms called helminths. Although many of these infections are not lethal, they can still impact health or animal behavior. A new study led by Washington University in St. Louis senior scientist, Amanda Koltz, uses a mathematical model and a global meta-analysis to highlight the cascading consequences of common parasitic infections in wild animals on terrestrial ecosystems. This work was funded by a LEC Seed grant.

Meet WashU professor, Fangqiong Ling who uses science to improve society