February 2024

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

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• Jason visited Montpellier, France for the first in a series of workshops for the DRAGON project

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January 2024

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

• Jason presented in the Prairie Research Institute's 2024 Lightning Symposium

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November 2023

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

• Undergrad mentees Ella Huller and Suhani Peramanu presented their community ecology work for an introductory research experiences course (IB 290) 

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August 2023

• We attended the Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center annual gathering in Indianapolis, where grad student Rohini Vembar delivered a great lighting talk!

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

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

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July 2023

• Undergrad mentees Uriah Elliott and Nathan Solano completed the Summer Research Opportunities Program 

• New paper on insect regional priority listing is out in Biological Conservation

• New paper on plant trait-conservatism relations is out in Ecological Applications

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June 2023

• Dr. Ayla Skorupa will be joining the lab as a Postdoctoral Associate working on aquatic invertebrates & precipitation extremes for the Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center 

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May 2023

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

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

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April 2023

• Awarded $205,000 through the Foundation for Biodiversity Research, DRAGON: Dragonflies as bellwether for the human impact on interface ecosystems 

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February 2023

• New dragonfly book! This kept us busy through the pandemic

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November 2022

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

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October 2022

• PRI interviews with graduate students Matt Finzel and Rohini Vembar

• Joined the 2023-2027 NSF Status of Insects global project

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September 2022

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

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July 2022

• Presented at the Botanical Society of America conference in Anchorage, Alaska

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June 2022

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

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

• Awarded GRA funding through the Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, Unified rapid assessment method for addressing wetland-related climate obstacles and priorities across the Midwest (PIs: Jog, Bried)

May 2022

• Joined the editorial board of Insect Conservation and Diversity 

March 2022

• Joined the affiliate faculty of the UIUC Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology

February 2022

• New paper on simplified detection of dispersal mass effects is out in Journal of Applied Ecology

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January 2022

• Joined the affiliate faculty of the UIUC Department of Entomology

• New paper testing practical implications of nonnative species in wetland Floristic Quality Assessment is out in Wetlands