This $167,390 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) supports a collaborative research effort to examine biodiversity dynamics in the Hawaiian Islands. The key goals are to: Integrate rapid assessment technologies at the landscape and island level to forecast changes in insect and spider populations using DNA-based metabarcoding techniques. Measure the velocity and extent of non-native plant invasions using satellite, aerial,...
This federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) provides $652,022 to the University of Hawaii to conduct collaborative research on biodiversity dynamics in the Hawaiian Islands. The project integrates rapid assessment technologies, including satellite, helicopter, drone, and ground-based monitoring, with arthropod metabarcoding to forecast changes in insect and spider populations. The goal is to infer processes shaping...
This $240,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) Project Grant award, with a performance period from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2027, will fund a postdoctoral research fellowship to investigate the role of symbiosis in driving the evolution and diversification of Hawaiian cixiid planthoppers. The research aims to leverage the unique geography and biodiversity of Hawaii to understand how microbial partnerships may contribute to host species diversity...
This $299,551 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) supports research at Colorado State University to evaluate the impacts of plant biodiversity on the productivity of grasslands and forests across the United States. The project will use remote sensing technologies and field-based observations to characterize different facets of biodiversity and quantify their relationships with primary productivity. The research aims to...
This $200,000 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology will fund research at Stanford University to analyze sediment DNA from lake cores in California in order to reconstruct over 1,200 years of insect diversity change. The researchers will employ sedimentary DNA techniques and high-throughput sequencing to characterize insect diversity over time. They will also assemble data on land use change, climate change, and pesticide applications to link...
This $297,323 Project Grant was awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology under the Biological Sciences (CFDA 47.074) federal grant program. The funding supports a collaborative research project to study how habitat structure, specifically the spatial arrangement of plants and resources, impacts avian biodiversity across local to continental scales. Using airborne and satellite Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors, the project will explore the...
This $290,025 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) supports research to develop new methods for detecting eukaryotic symbionts associated with insects. The primary awardee, the University of Iowa, will use the funding to: 1) design PCR blocking primers to inhibit amplification of insect DNA while allowing detection of other eukaryotic organisms, and 2) conduct large-scale surveys of insect-symbiont diversity across two...
This $463,000 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) funds research to study the origin and evolution of vertebrate diversity on the Marajo Island in the Amazon rainforest. The key activities include: Field collections of small vertebrates (amphibians, lizards, mammals) at four sites on Marajo Island Acquisition of genomic data from the collected samples and historical specimens from the Amazon basin Phylogenetic and population...
This Project Grant award, with a total funding of $116,555, was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences (CFDA 47.074) program to the University of Arizona (Arizona Board of Regents). The project aims to compile an open-access, cross-scale database of species invasions centered around the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) datasets. This database will be analyzed using advanced statistical methods to test theories on the relative roles of propagule...
This $687,357 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) supports research to study repeated evolution in a diverse group of alpine beetles. The researchers will explore whether natural selection has acted on the same molecular pathways as species adapted to alpine environments during past climate cycles. Comparative genomic and stress tolerance experiments will test for evidence of repeated evolution and identify the genetic mechanisms...
This $975,393 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) supports a collaborative research project to link broad-scale remote sensing with arthropod DNA metabarcoding across different landscapes in the Hawaiian Islands. The goal is to infer the processes shaping biodiversity and its decline, and how these can be captured remotely across varying scales and degrees of human impact. The researchers will integrate rapid assessment technologies, including satellite, helicopter, drone, and ground-based monitoring, to measure the velocity and extent of non-native plant invasions. These metrics will be combined with high-throughput genomic analyses of insect and spider biodiversity at the same sites. The outcomes are intended to aid land managers with actionable solutions, and the project will also provide mentoring for undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral researchers, as well as develop educational resources for communicating biodiversity and remote sensing data. The award period is from January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2027, and the lead institution is the University of California, Berkeley.