Biology / Microbiology / Biochemistry

This study will contrast the extraction of DNA/RNA from aerosols collected with electrostatic precipitation (a relatively new collection method) with a common membrane filtration protocol to identify the most appropriate method for future regional and global scale aerobiology research projects.

The principals of conservation biology are waiting to be applied to restore native coregonines in the Great Lakes. Native fishes have suffered extinctions and extirpations owing to loss of habitat, interactions with invasive species, and overfishing, and now fishery managers are committed to their restoration.

Do fisheries managers know the impacts of improving recreational fishing technology on the populations of fish they manage? The role of gear innovations in recreational fisheries is understudied as a driver of overexploitation in inland waters. Examining technology advances will inform recreational managment.

Work with quantitative spatial wildlife ecologists to identify best practices for sampling rare and threatened carnivores using cutting edge statistical techniques. The results will be useful for sampling carnivore populations across the world. You will be stationed in beautiful northwest Montana in Glacier National Park.

Much of this research is centered on animal or human-associated pathogens, the antimicrobial resistance potential of those pathogens, and the influence of these pathogens on recreational water quality, drinking-water quality, and water quality in agricultural and urban watersheds.

Plants and insects comprise a large portion of problematic invasive species. The success of these invasions largely depends on the outcomes of plant-insect interactions in which plants that escape herbivores may be more successful invaders, and herbivores that find adequate hosts have the opportunity to establish. This project will explore the dynamics of introduced plant or insect populations, or

Relict forests are becoming more common as as climates become hotter, drier and more saline. The first sign of threat to these forests is a chronic lack of seedling and sapling recruitment. This project will help pinpoint forests at risk to help in future management.

As a leading team in stream sensor application, we welcome a GRIP intern to help expand our focus on DOC quality. The intern will have free experimental reign in an established research watershed with great opportunities to publish. This position is set in a beautiful small town /rural setting with plenty of outdoor recreational activities.

Spend a summer on the shore of Lake Michigan, investigating the role that dynamic dune disturbance and successional processes play in the spatial metapopulation dynamics of Pitcher’s thistle, a federally threatened plant. This project will provide a basis for developing spatial population models that can indicate the present and future conditions for the species in the Great Lakes.

Want to conduct collaborative eco-geomorphic research at the forefront of climate change impacts? We have a novel landscape-scale ecosystem experiment, using two adjacent tidal rivers with a 9x difference in watershed sediment loads, to determine how sediment availability regulates the resilience or loss of tidal freshwater wetlands as the result of sea level rise and salinization.

Molecular methods such as quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) allow scientists the ability to target specific genes allowing for a rapid, sensitive, and cost-effective way to determine the presence and relative abundance of potential pathogen genes in the environment. Although there are many benefits to qPCR such as not relying on the ability to culture fastidious microorganisms ...