2024
-November: Congratulations to Doan Goolsby on receiving 2nd place (Honorable Mention) in the RISE Symposium Poster Competition!
-October: Check out the new publication led by lab alum Ella Samuel featuring Rachel Mitchell on the (lack of) utility of trait variability for prediction in new environments!
-October: Congratulations on passing your comprehensive exams, Candidate Ethan Taber!
– Welcome Cameron Crowder, newest FunEco member and Springfield Fellow!
– August: Kat Sacoman is the new Ecologist at Ricardo Manzo Elementary School! Congrats Kat!
– July: Maddie Wallace completes her first marathon in Missoula Montana! Check out her race photo here!
– July: Ian Winick is a finalist for the Ton Damman award at this year’s ESA! Go see his talk!
-June: Kat Sacoman successfully defends her MS Thesis examining vegetation change in response to flow regime along the Santa Cruz River! WAY TO GO, KAT!
-May: Maddie Wallace wins Student Leadership award and Ian Winick wins Zube Scholarship in SNRE! Congratulation Maddie and Ian!
-May: Ethan Taber accepts faculty job with Feather River College! Major congratulations, Ethan!
-April: Virginia Javier accepts job as logistics coordinator with NPS and GBI within the Sierra Nevada Inventory and Monitoring Network. Congrats, Virginia!
– April: Hannah Rogers, undergraduate researcher in FunEco, accepts a job as Conservation and Land Management Intern with USFS Native Seed Collection! Congrats, Hannah!
– March: Lab Alum Ella Samuel’s paper Perspectives on challenges and opportunities at the restoration-policy interface in the U.S.A. is one of Restoration Ecology’s most downloaded publications for 2021-2022! Congrats Ella!
-March: Check out our new paper on how experimental warming and fire-severity interact to shape succession in the Journal of Vegetation Science led by Ethan Taber!
-February: Paper examining seed source environment effects on drought response with lab Alum Zoe Klein published in Restoration Ecology!
– January: Check out a new publication with a FunEco coauthor on decoupling of phylogenetic and functional diversity in European grasslands
2023:
-December: FunEco lab wins UA Provost Investment Fund grant to create a trait database for the historic Santa Rita Experimental Range!
-December: Virginia Javier wins Exploratory Mini Grant from the Franke Honor’s College! Congratulations, Virginia!
-November: Check out a new commentary in Functional Ecology on functional traits for fire ecology co-written by Rachel Mitchell and Adam Martin, and the excellent paper that inspired it by Boving et el.
-November: Undergraduate Honors Student Virginia Javier wins a campus-wide UA Original Research grant! Congrats Virginia!
-November: Check out a new (UW Alum team-up with Dr. Susan Waters) publication featuring FunEco’s Rachel Mitchell and Ethan Taber examining impacts of prescribed fire on plant-pollinator networks!
– October: Ian, Kat and Maddie awarded registration grants to the Society for Ecological Restoration – SW Chapter meeting! Go FunEco!
– September: FunEco Awarded DFFM Invasive Plant Grant! Let’s feed some cows invasive plants!
-August: Check out the new publication led by lab alum Zoe Klein looking at maternal environmental impacts on drought response in Restoration Ecology!
-July: FunEco is part of a collaborative team awarded an NSF grant to study social-ecological wildfire risk across the American West!
– June: Check out a new manuscript led by my PhD advisor, Jon Bakker, exploring compositional change (and how to measure it) with the NutNet project!
– May: Ethan Taber wins JFSP GRIN Fellowship to study the effects of time since fuel treatment on fine fuels!
– May: Ethan Taber receives the Ervin H. Zube Scholarship. Congratulations, Ethan!
– May: Check out the new paper led by PhD Student Ethan Taber in Forest Ecology and Management examining the impacts of post-fire warming on the forest understory!
– April: Heidi Goodrich successfully defends her MS Thesis! Congrats Heidi!
– April: FunEco Lab member Ethan Taber wins UA SNRE graduate award! Congrats Ethan!
– February: A new paper led by a team of restoration researchers (including Rachel Mitchell and lab alum Ashlee Wolf), extension specialists, and restoration practitioners examines the role of functional traits in restoration practice.
– January: Check out our new publication on the history of restoration policy in Restoration Ecology led by lab alum Ella Samuel!
Trait-Based Ecology at The University of Arizona 