Conservation & Molecular Ecology @Brown
  • Home
  • People
  • Publications
  • Research
  • Conservation
  • News
  • Join
  • Contact

New Research in Journal of Animal Ecology

6/9/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
Multiple dimensions of dietary diversity in large mammalian herbivores -- a new article from the lab -- was featured on the cover of the June issue of Journal of Animal Ecology.
0 Comments

Congratulations all around!

5/14/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
The lab has much to celebrate as we close out another semester, even despite the disruptions of COVID-19.
  • Congratulations to Patrick Freeman for earning a Masters based on a thesis comparing ecological hypotheses about the distributions of plants and large herbivores in Kenya!
  • Congratulations to incoming Voss postdoc Colin Donihue for publishing several high-impact papers, including one featured on the cover of PNAS (generating a buzz in the NY Times and elsewhere) and one in Nature Ecology and Evolution!
  • Congratulations to Courtney Reed for winning a grant from the American Philosophical Society’s Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration & Field Research!
  • Congratulations to seniors graduating with amazing research accomplishments: Amanda Lyons (Honors), Catherine Porter, and Violet Sackett!
  • Congratulations to Amanda Lyons '20 for admission into Brown's 5th year Masters program to conduct research on diamondback terrapins in collaboration with governmental and non-profit partners, and with generous support from a Diamondback Terrapin Working Group Grant!
  • Congratulations to Cate Porter '20 for admission into the University of Virginia's Environmental Science graduate program!
  • Congratulations to Jen Guyton (Princeton PhD) for earning the cover of Nature Ecology and Evolution based on our work to understand and restore the ecosystems of Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique!
  • Congratulations to Ashley Bang '19 on her upcoming position in Lian Pin Koh's lab at the National University of Singapore!
0 Comments

Recent papers highlighted for impact

12/6/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
A pair of recent papers from the lab were highlighted for the creative use of DNA metabarcoding to solve problems and ask new questions in fields that span ecology and biomedical science.

1. Our recent paper documenting variation in diet-microbiome linkages in African megafauna was highlighted on the cover of PNAS, Brown University's news, The Division of Biomedicine's 'Kudos' memo, and in the media. This open access paper reflects the results of a long-term collaboration with Rob Pringle from Princeton, Paul Musili from the National Museums of Kenya, a creative honors thesis by Julianna Hsing, and the microbiome-bioinformatics chops of current grad student Bianca Brown.

2. ​Our recent paper in mSystems creatively translated the DNA metabarcoding approaches that we've been using for wildlife research into a biomedical context to evaluate the plant component of human diets. Using DNA-based evidence of human diet composition could be highly complementary to the current standard of asking human subjects to maintain diet logs in research on human health and nutrition. The paper was highlighted as Editor's pick in the area of Clinical Science and Epidemiology by the journal, as well as in a thoughtful commentary by Frank Maixner, who further highlighted the connections between this work and the fields of archaeology and ancient DNA. The paper was co-led by Aspen Reese based on samples from a prior experimental study investigating the influences of diet interventions on human gut microbiomes, which was led by Lawrence David.
0 Comments

Paper featured on the cover of Nature & in media

6/5/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
New research combining large field experiments and molecular ecology published today in Nature. The paper is featured in a Nature News & Views article by Oswald Schmitz, a 3-min Nature Video, a great PBS NOVA article by Katherine Wu, among others.
0 Comments

Conservation lessons from large-mammal manipulations in East Africa

5/16/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
An extensive review by Goheen et al. was just released as a contribution to ​The Year in Ecology and Conservation Biology series. The paper details major conservation lessons learned through large-scale and long-term experiments involving large-mammal communities in Kenya -- an important set of lessons for ecologists and conservation biologists provided by an inspirational team of researchers and collaborators.
0 Comments

Budischak's "rewilding lab mice" paper in Frontiers in Immunology

1/8/2018

0 Comments

 
The full text of this exciting new paper is online today: Feeding immunity: physiological and behavioral responses to infection and resource limitation. The article appears in a special feature of Frontiers in Immunology entitled Wild immunity -- the answers are out there. Congratulations to Sarah Budischak, Andrea Graham, and coauthors!

One of the most exciting aspects of this paper is the idea of "
rewilding laboratory mice" to begin understanding the ecology of this model organism in genetics and medicine. What happens when lab mice are infected with an intestinal parasite, put outside, and tasked with surviving in a world with limited resources? 

Add on top of that all of the exciting technology brought together to probe this creative experiment for mechanism -- PIT tags, DNA metabarcoding, NMR spectroscopy -- and you've got the makings of a classic. In this experiment, custom-built feeding devices capable of tracking foraging behavior, paired with DNA metabarcoding, revealed compensatory feeding behaviors by mice that otherwise might have masked the effects of infection.

Especially relevant to research in our lab, a hormone called leptin that serves as an indicator of hunger and body fat was correlated with consumption of different species of wild plants. Animals with higher leptin concentrations tended to eat more protein-rich clovers and other legumes than did animals with lower leptin, potentially pointing to different foraging behaviors and differential selectivity for wild foods as mechanisms for dealing with infection while reestablishing a dietary niche after generations in the laboratory. Although the effect sizes for the DNA metabarcoding data were small, these tantalizing trends highlight the importance of these measurements and the value of the technique. A valuable contribution.

0 Comments

Pellegrini's 'bark thickness' paper published in Ecology Letters

1/23/2017

0 Comments

 
Proud to contribute to a paper by Adam Pellegrini and coauthors that was just published in Ecology Letters: "Convergence of bark investment according to fire and climate structures ecosystem vulnerability to future change" (PDF).

Our work finds that some ecosystems contain tree species that are well adapted to the predicted changes in global fire regimes due to climate change, while others are composed of trees that may be particularly vulnerable. The paper was highlighted on Princeton's homepage and in Nature News!
0 Comments

    Archives

    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    October 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    September 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016

    Categories

    All
    Awards
    BASEPAIR
    Climate
    Conferences
    Conservation
    Courses
    Diversity And Inclusion
    Fieldwork
    IBES
    Lab
    Mpala
    Opportunities
    OTS
    Papers
    Press

    RSS Feed


Picture
Copyright 2021 © Tyler Kartzinel

  • Home
  • People
  • Publications
  • Research
  • Conservation
  • News
  • Join
  • Contact