This $180,000 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) supports postdoctoral research examining taxon-specific responses to aridity gradients in small mammals over time and across space in the northwestern Great Basin of the United States. The awardee will analyze small mammal bones deposited in caves over the past 16,000 years to test hypotheses about species sensitivity to climate drying and whether ongoing changes in climate or land use pose a...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $279,943 Project Grant to the University of Oregon to conduct collaborative research on the evolution of North American small mammal communities in response to landscape changes from the Oligocene to Miocene epochs (30 to 5 million years ago). The project aims to understand the relationship between vegetation and mammalian communities, with a focus on how small mammals respond to habitat changes over time. The research will integrate fieldwork to...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences awarded a $202,138 Project Grant to the University of Washington under the Geosciences (CFDA 47.050) program. The grant funds a collaborative research project to examine the evolution of North American small mammal communities in response to landscape changes over the past 30 to 5 million years. The researchers will collect fossils and sediment samples from the U.S. Great Plains and Northwest to study how changes in habitat...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) supports collaborative research to study the effects of climate change on mammalian functional diversity. The $205,877 award to the Stony Brook University Research Foundation will generate 3D datasets from micro-CT scans of mammalian fossils and develop new AI tools to rapidly analyze functional traits like dental topography and limb morphology. This will characterize changes in mammalian functional...
This $419,234 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) supports research to study the effects of climate change on mammalian functional diversity over long timescales. Key objectives include: Analyzing changes in mammal functional diversity, floral composition, and abiotic factors like temperature before, during, and after the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) climate event in the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. This will elucidate the...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $716,280 Project Grant under the Biological Sciences (CFDA 47.074) program to the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana. The grant funds a collaborative research project to investigate the potential impacts of climate change on the interactions between parasitic botfly larvae and high-elevation deer mice populations. The research aims to develop predictive models for how novel host-parasite dynamics may evolve under shifting environmental...
This $351,499 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) supports research to quantify the ecological legacy of the Terminal Pleistocene megafaunal extinction on mammal communities in the Edward's Plateau region of Texas. The research team at the University of Nebraska will characterize changes in diet, morphology, and ecological interactions of extinct and surviving mammals over the past 20,000 years through stable isotope analysis, 2D/3D...
This $372,195 federal Project Grant, awarded by the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050), supports a collaborative research project to study the effects of climate change on mammalian functional diversity using a high-resolution fossil record and novel AI workflows. The key products and services to be delivered under this 3-year award, which began on November 1, 2024, include: Generating 3D datasets from micro-CT scans of mammalian fossils to characterize functional...
This three-year, four hundred twenty-six thousand seven hundred eighteen dollar Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) will support research at The Ohio State University to understand the spatiotemporal variation in community assembly processes through ecological modeling and functional trait analyses of small mammal fossil records over the past 21,000 years. The research team will conduct chronological reassessment of existing fossil data and...
This two-year Project Grant from the National Science Foundation Division of Earth Sciences provides $174,000 to study mammals as indicators of ecological recovery following the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event. Funded under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050), the award will support basic research exploring the relationship between topographic diversity and the reestablishment of mammal populations in the aftermath of the extinction. By strengthening understanding of the...