Current GK-12 Fellows

Name: Nicholas Ballew (ballewn1@msu.edu)
Department: Zoology/EEBB
Advisor: Gary Mittelbach
Research Location: Kellogg Biological Station
Degrees Held: B.A., Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, 2006
Starting Year in Program: 2008
Statement: I am interested in studying how populations evolve in response to ecological change, especially change that is the result of human behavior. I seek to understand how a population may evolve in response to interacting directly with humans (such as humans preying on the population), and also how a population may evolve in response to an anthropogenic alteration to the environment (such as the introduction of an invasive species). I hope to use results from this line of research to predict how a target population would adapt to ecological change that is the result of human behavior.

Name: Tyler Bassett (basset17@msu.edu)

Name: Micaleila Desotelle (desotell@msu.edu)

Department: Zoology
Advisor: Steve Hamilton
Research Location: Kellogg Biological Station
Degrees Held: M.A., Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, 2007; B.S., Biology, Environmental Science, Winona State University, 2002
Starting Year in Program: 2007
Statement: My research explores how food web subsidies can influence communities. I study the Kalamazoo River, which has several dams. Dams change the flow of the water and can increase the production of phytoplankton. The phytoplankton can act as a subsidy both temporally and spatially. Stream insect communities change along the river, and some of this response is to the subsidy from dams. Rivers frequently have multiple dams though many are aging and will be removed in the coming decades. Therefore, understanding how dams change food sources is important for the management of rivers.

Name: Michael Kuczynski (kuczyns8@msu.edu)

Department: Zoology

Advisor: Tom Getty

Research Location: Kellogg Biological Station

Degrees Held: B.S., Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, Univ. of Minnesota, 2009

Starting Year in Program: 2009

Statement: I am broadly interested in communication and sexual selection. Specifically, I study how life history trade-offs affect sexual signaling in American toads (Bufo americanus). Many species face a trade-off between current and future reproductive effort: greater current sexual signaling and reproductive effort reduces longevity and future reproduction. Older individuals however experience reduced marginal costs of reproductive effort due to declining future reproductive opportunities. All else being equal, older, poor quality males are expected to signal as intensively as younger, high quality males. This could potentially reduce the correlation between observable signals and unobservable qualities of importance to females, which could affect reproductive and population dynamics. I utilize field recordings of the calling behavior of male toads of different ages and physical condition to examine these predictions.

Name: Christine Neiman (niemanc2@msu.edu)

Department: Animal Science

Advisor: Santiago Utsumi

Research Location: Kellogg Biological Station

Starting Year in Program: 2010

Name: Alycia Reynolds Lackey (reyno340@msu.edu)

Department: Zoology
Advisor: Jenny Boughman
Degrees Held: B.S., Biology 2006
Starting Year in Program: 2010
Research Interests: I am interested in species interactions with each other and with their environments. Broadly, I work on behavior, mating interactions, competition, invasive species, resource use, habitat use, and impacts of habitat loss. More specifically, I study mating and competitive interactions between two species of stickleback fish, which are small minnow-sized fish that live in freshwater lakes in British Columbia, Canada. I study how mating and competitive interactions are mediated by habitat structure and loss of habitat. The sticklebacks I study are endangered in Canada, so my work also inform conservation efforts to preserve these species, which are textbook examples of how evolution works.

Name: Leilei Ruan (ruanleil@msu.edu)

Department: Crop and Soil Sciences

Advisor: Phil Robertson

Research Location: Kellogg Biological Station

Degrees Held: M.S., Soil Science, Huazhong Agricultural University, 2007; B.S., Land Resources Management, Anhui Agricultural University, 2004

Starting Year in Program: 2007

Research Interests: Soil greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, impacts of growing biofuel crops on climate change in terms of GHG emissions from cultivationStatement: I study soil science & environmental science and policy. My research focuses on greenhouse gas (CO2, CH4 and N2O) emissions from agricultural ecosystems. Specifically, my research 1) explores the response of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and biomass yields to nitrogen application rate and attempts to reduce GHG emissions through proper nitrogen fertilization management while still maintaining crop yields; 2) explores to what degree no-till practices can reduce GHG emissions after conversion from the Conservation Reserve Program land to cropland; 3) explores whether freeze-thaw cycles caused by global warming will increase GHG emissions from tilled soil.

Department: Plant Biology
Advisor: Jen Lau
Degrees Held: BA, Environmental Biology, Colgate University, 2008
Starting Year in Program: 2008
Research Interests: Community ecology and invasion biology
Statement: My research is on invasive plant species and their interactions with the communities they invade. Specifically, I am interested in studying the role of plant soil feedbacks (PSF) in species invasions. I plant to look at factors such as time since invasion and relatedness to other individuals in the community to see if these factors affect the acquisition of soil enemies for a new invader. My current research uses Acer platanoides to study the Enemy Release Hypothesis and PSF to determine if A. platanoides' ability to invade intact forests comes from a relatively more positive PSF as compared to the native A. saccharum, and whether these feedbacks can alter the outcome of competition.

Name: Kate Steensma (steensm7@msu.edu)