2024 News

• New paper debunking a long-held Floristic Quality Assessment assumption in Ecosphere (November 2024) 

• New paper on local environment and parasitic coinfection of damselflies in the Journal of Animal Ecology (October 2024) 

• Presented at the Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center annual gathering in East Lansing, Michigan (August 2024) 

• New paper on dragonfly reproductive success in stormwater ponds in the International Journal of Odonatology (August 2024) 

• New paper on tracking endangered species recovery status in Conservation Science and Practice (July 2024)

• Our chapter on citizen science for insect conservation was published in the Routledge Handbook for Insect Conservation (June 2024)​

• New York University M.S. student Weiqing Qu joined the lab as a summer research affiliate, working on a network analysis of dragonfly competitive interactions in artificial ponds (May 2024)

• Travelled to Kerala, India helping lead a University of Illinois College of ACES study abroad (May 2024)​

• Undergrad mentees Ella Huller and Suhani Peramanu presented in the University of Illinois Undergraduate Research Symposium (April 2024)​

• Post doc Ayla Skorupa presented in the INHS Spring Seminar Series (April 2024)

• Awarded $300,000, EPA Region 5 Wetland Program Development Grant, Developing a Midwest climate-sensitivity bioindicator for wetland resiliency mapping and monitoring (April 2024)​

• Grad students Matt Finzel and Rohini Vembar presented at the Wisconsin Wetland Association's annual conference - Rohini received honorable mention! (February 2024)​​

• Travelled to Montpellier, France for the first in a series of workshops for the DRAGON project  (February 2024)​

• Dr. Ayla Skorupa began working in the lab as a Postdoctoral Associate. Welcome Ayla! (January 2024)

• Presented in the Prairie Research Institute's 2024 Lightning Symposium (January 2024)​​

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2023 News

• Grad student Rohini Vembar discusses her thesis research: iSEE news release and Midwest CASC blog post (November 2023)

• Undergrad mentees Ella Huller and Suhani Peramanu presented our community ecology work in IB 290: Introduction to Undergraduate Research in Integrative Biology (November 2023) 

• Attended the Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center annual gathering in Indianapolis (August 2023)

• Several lab members and collaborators presented in an FQI workshop at the Ecological Society of America conference in Portland (August 2023)

• Started participating in the Global Insect Threat-Response Synthesis (GLiTRS) project (August 2023) ​

• Undergrad mentees Uriah Elliott and Nathan Solano completed the Summer Research Opportunities Program (July 2023)

• New paper on insect regional priority listing in Biological Conservation (July 2023)

• New paper on plant trait-conservatism relations in Ecological Applications (July 2023)​​

• Aidan Garrett joined the lab as an Entomology graduate student funded by the Illinois Department of Transportation. Welcome Aidan! (May 2023)

• Awarded $400,000, USGS Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, Synthesizing responses and vulnerabilities of priority aquatic invertebrates to precipitation extremes across the Midwest (May 2023)​

• Awarded $205,000, Foundation for Biodiversity Research (France), DRAGON: Dragonflies as bellwether for the human impact on interface ecosystems (April 2023)​

• New dragonfly book! This kept us busy through the pandemic (February 2023)​

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2022 News​

• Joined the USFWS Midwest working group for recovering the endangered rusty patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis) (November 2022)

• PRI interviews with graduate students Matt Finzel and Rohini Vembar (October 2022)

• Joined the 2023-2027 NSF Status of Insects global project (October 2022)

• Co-led a winter twig ID workshop at the Natural Areas Conference in Duluth, Minnesota (September 2022)

• Presented at the Botanical Society of America conference in Anchorage, Alaska (July 2022)

• Our chapter on insect coexistence and global change was published in Elsevier's Imperiled: The Encyclopedia of Conservation (June 2022)

• Rohini Vembar and Matt Finzel joined the lab as Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences graduate students. Welcome Rohini and Matt! (June 2022)

• Awarded GRA funding, USGS Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, Unified rapid assessment method for addressing wetland-related climate obstacles and priorities across the Midwest (June 2022)

• Joined the editorial board of Insect Conservation and Diversity (May 2022)

• Joined the affiliate faculty of the UIUC Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology (March 2022)

• New paper on simplified detection of dispersal mass effects in Journal of Applied Ecology (February 2022)​

• Joined the affiliate faculty of the UIUC Department of Entomology (January 2022)

• New paper testing practical implications of nonnative species in wetland Floristic Quality Assessment in Wetlands (January 2022)