We study plant-pollinator interactions from nutritional and cognitive perspectives. We are interested in understanding how bees evaluate, learn about, and remember flowers. Likewise, we are interested in how the nutritional value of the nectar and pollen plants offer bees structures interactions with pollinators and co-flowering members of plant communities. An interest in understanding how human activities can perturb these interactions drives a parallel line of research, on how sublethal exposure to pesticides can affect bee behavior, sensory systems, and health. We address these questions using a combination of lab-based and field studies, often on bumblebees, at Sierra Nevada and Great Basin field sites.
Meeghan Gray
My research interests have focused on the behavioral ecology of large mammals, particularly the interactions between males and females, especially in the context of sex and reproduction. I have always been fascinated with why individuals mate with certain individuals and how those decisions impact levels of parental investment, offspring survival, and future conflict between the sexes. The majority of my research has stemmed from management based projects that I use to examine major themes in behavioral ecology. Currently, I am studying bobcat health and presence in suburban West Reno.
Donald Price
A major theme in my research is to understand how species adapt to diverse environmental and biological factors and diverge into new species. The evolutionary changes that permit species to survive and reproduce across a wide range of environments has resulted in a remarkable range of biological complexity.
My research group studies the interplay of behavior, ecology, genetics, and physiology to determine how species adapt to environmental changes and how diversification of populations leads eventually to the formation of new species. One focus of my group is the amazing Hawaiian Drosophila, which boasts up to 1,000 species in several taxonomic groups. Using genome sequencing and gene expression analyses coupled with detailed behavioral and physiological measurements we have identified genes that are involved in temperature adaptation between two species and between two populations within one species along an environmental gradient. We have also identified genes and epicuticular hydrocarbons that are involved in behavioral reproductive isolation and hybrid sterility between species. Initial studies have begun on the interaction with microbes, (bacteria and yeasts) that are important for food, internal parasites/symbionts, and possibly host-plant associations. In collaboration with others, we are also investigating the genetics of Hawaiian bats and birds, Drosophila melanogaster, the invasive Drosophila suzukii, and Hawaiian Metrosideros trees.
Allen Gibbs
My lab uses experimental evolution in the laboratory to study how physiological systems evolve. We subject populations of fruitflies (Drosophila) to stressful conditions and investigate how they evolve in response to stress over many generations. Our current major projects involve flies that have been selected for resistance to desiccation and starvation stress for >100 generations. To understand the relevance of this laboratory research to nature, we have also studied several other types of insects and their relatives, including grasshoppers, ants, desert fruitflies, scorpions, etc.
David Alvarez-Ponce
Assistant Professor, University of Nevada, Reno, 2014 – present
Juan de la Cierva Postdoctoral fellow, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Spain, 2012-2014
Postdoctoral fellow, Trinity College Dublin, 2012
Postdoctoral researcher, National University of Ireland Maynooth, 2010-2012
See our lab webpage for research description: https://genomeevol.wordpress.com
Lynn Fenstermaker
Dr. Lynn Fenstermaker is an Emeritus faculty, and has experience and interests in the use of remotely sensed data to map, monitor, and assess the effect of environmental stressors on vegetation at small and large scales. She has served as Director of two NSHE climate change experiments; the Nevada Desert FACE (Free Air CO2 Enrichment) Facility and the Mojave Global Change Facility and is currently Director of the NV Climate-ecohydrological Assessment Network (NevCAN). All three of these projects have been examining various aspects of climate change impacts on the Mojave and Great Basin Deserts. Some of her recent research on evapotranspiration has scaled leaf and canopy measurements to plant community and ecosytem levels using remotely sensed data from ground, UAV and satellite sources. Dr. Fenstermaker is the DRI liaison for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and has worked with the University of Nevada Las Vegas to develop a Class I UAS platform. This platform has been used for several years to acquire multispectral and color images of research plots to assess climate change treatment effects and basic plant cover information.
Peter Weisberg
Dr. Weisberg is interested in the causes and consequences of landscape change, including natural disturbances, effects of anthropogenic land use, ungulate-landscape interactions, and invasive species. His research often considers past landscape change as a guide to understanding present and future condition, and integrates field studies, GIS, remote sensing and simulation modeling. Ongoing research projects within his lab group address disturbance ecology, woodland expansion, post-fire succession, and ecological restoration in Great Basin pinyon-juniper woodlands; fire history and ecology of mountain big sagebrush communities; fire ecology of the Sierra Nevada (Lake Tahoe Basin); and the ecology of tamarisk invasions along the Colorado River in Grand Canyon.
Matt Forister
The Forister lab works in the areas of specialization, diversification, and plant-insect ecology. Specific questions and topics include the evolution of diet breadth, evolutionary interactions across trophic levels, phenology and population regulation. We are also interested in the conservation and management of insect diversity. In the field, our research includes the Great Basin, the Sierra Nevada, and much of the western hemisphere including tropical sites. In the lab, we combine physiological and behavioral experiments with genomic sequencing of novel-model organisms.
Scott Abella
Scott Abella is an assistant professor in restoration ecology with the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. His areas of expertise include fire management, ecological restoration, plant ecology, and habitat-wildlife relationships. He also owns the consulting firm Natural Resource Conservation LLC.
Our lab group focuses on restoration ecology and applied conservation science. Restoration ecology is the science behind repairing ecosystems that are damaged or destroyed. This does not mean exactly replicating some type of past or current “undisturbed” ecosystem, which is rarely even possible. Rather, restoration seeks to favorably change sites so an ecosystem can support native species and recover functions, like providing wildlife habitat. Similarly, applied conservation science provides a foundation for sustaining native ecological diversity and desired natural resources.
To advance these areas, we also conduct supporting research in fire ecology, plant ecology, invasion biology and non-native species management, and landscape ecology.