The Science Division has announced that Erika Zavaleta, a professor in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, has won its 2023-24 Outstanding Faculty Award. The annual prize is the division’s highest honor for faculty achievement, recognizing combined excellence in research, teaching, and service.
Roxanne Beltran, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, is among 50 people from around the world being honored this year for “doing remarkable work to promote science and exploration.”
UC Santa Cruz has received nearly $7.5 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) to vault scientific research on imperiled Pacific salmon populations into one of the nation’s most powerful collaborations between the agency and academia to save the vital species.
The National Science Foundation will fund research at UC Santa Cruz that will examine the DNA of brown bears in the lower 48 states, where the iconic beast’s numbers have seen catastrophic declines over the last century. The research project will use genetic-sequencing technologies to study the effects of this rapid population decline, as well as the impacts of previous conservation-management actions.
As the only full-time staff member at UC Santa Cruz’s Ford Old Natural Reserve, Director Joe Miller doesn’t need to create more work for himself. And yet, he’s managed to do just that by successfully partnering with a nearby charter high school that brings students onto the 610-acre property to teach students about local natural history and introduce them to career pathways in natural science and conservation.
The National Academy of Sciences will honor 20 individuals with awards recognizing their extraordinary scientific achievements in a wide range of fields spanning the physical, biological, social, and medical sciences. Among the esteemed awardees is Terrie M. Williams, a comparative ecophysiologist from the University of California, Santa Cruz, who will be honored with the 2024 NAS Award in the Evolution of Earth and Life – Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal.
As the California sea lion population got bigger, so did male sea lions
Tiny organisms in the Southern Ocean play an outsized role in moderating Earth’s climate
Brainwave patterns show elephant seals take short naps while holding their breath on deep dives, averaging just 2 hours of sleep per day while at sea
Beth Shapiro, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies
An international team of scientists has documented the earliest evidence for local abundance in eastern Africa of the types of grasses that now dominate grassland and savannah ecosystems in tropical and subtropical regions around the world
Research on the feeding behavior of Antarctic minke whales found that a smaller whale could not capture enough food to survive using the lunge-feeding strategy of baleen whales.
