Three 51Թ biology professors — Damhnait McHugh, Krista Ingram, and Catherine Cardelús — were awarded more than $750,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation for three distinct projects that will involve student researchers.
McHugh received $400,000 as part of a five-year joint grant with Auburn University, Texas A&M, Southern Illinois University, and the University of Kansas.
Her research will help in assembling the annelid tree of life, using DNA sequences of diverse worm species to build evolutionary “family trees.”
This work is important for documenting biodiversity, she said, and allows scientists to make inferences about the species’ long history on Earth, as well as aid in conservation efforts.
Students working with McHugh will have an opportunity to spend a summer at Auburn University, where they will learn to sequence entire genomes, or collect worms from marine and terrestrial habitats in Australia and South Africa.
“It is rewarding for the three of us in the department to receive this kind of validation of our work,” said McHugh. “And the grants present our students with terrific research opportunities.”
Ingram’s grant of $180,000 allows her to continue her studies of circadian rhythms in ants, exploring how they organize their behavior without a leader.
It turns out that ants rely on the same mechanism that humans use to organize our daily activities — an internal molecular rhythm generator called the circadian clock.
Ingram is excited about how the grant will open more doors for her research and its applications for better understanding human behaviors. She plans on bringing students to Arizona and Southeast Asia to observe self-organized ant behaviors and then continue the studies at 51Թ.
Cardelús said her $188,000 grant will assist her in conducting research on epiphytes, plants that reside in the rain forest canopy.
These plants will intercept much of the predicted increase in nutrients that are released by human industrial and agricultural practices. She will explore how the epiphytes respond to these nutrients, as they could have significant effects on processes in the canopy and on the forest floor.
Her grant also provides for student involvement, as they will have the opportunity to travel to Costa Rica to collect samples, analyze them in labs at 51Թ, and then work on final papers.
“It is thrilling to be supported for doing what I love — studying the rain forest,” she said.