Category: News

News items and stories about department’s faculty, programs, research, students, staff, etc.

When Wildfire Makes the Forest Understory the Star

PhD candidate Nathan Kiel and Dr. Monica Turner explore what happens to Yellowstone’s understory plant communities when forests don’t come back after wildfire.

Community Highlight – Allia Lin

We love celebrating the success of our students! Today, we would like highlight Allia Lin, a senior in the Zoology Major. Allia found out about the summer sophomore apprenticeship program during the summer of 2021 and started studying Zebrafish larvae in Dr. David Ehrlich’s lab. Her work resulted in a publication in Current Biology, a …

Tomorrow’s Yellowstone: How a warming world is changing the places we love

Greater Yellowstone is just one ecosystem in one corner of the world. However, studying how one landscape responds as the climate heats up can help us understand what may happen in places around the world facing similar changes. And since so many people love Yellowstone, it’s a great place to help the public appreciate the …

Re-creation of the glass invertebrate models for teaching at UW–Madison

UW–Madison’s Zoological Museum was established at the very first UW Board of Regents meeting in 1848. After the first Science Hall burned, Edward A. Birge — professor of zoology, later UW–Madison president — started purchasing specimens to replace ones lost in the fire, including a collection of glass invertebrate models created by German glassblowers Leopold …

UW-Madison’s Zoological Museum boasts amazing teaching tools

UW’s Zoological Museum gives students, faculty and visitors a chance to interact with biological specimens from around the world and across time. A lion, some mammoths and a battalion of flesh-eating beetles are just a few of our favorite things on display and behind the scenes. Read more from the Cap Times: https://captimes.com/news/education/uw-madisons-zoological-museum-boasts-amazing-teaching-tools/article_81eef225-bccf-51a6-8ec6-1fa6313b8414.html

Stephanie Mcfarlane recieves 2023 Undergraduate Mentoring Award

Congrats to Stephanie Mcfarlane a post doc in the Damschen lab who recieved an undergraduate mentoring award.

Academic Advisor India Viola recipient of the 2023 Community Leadership Award

Death Cap Mushroom’s invasion success may be linked to newly documented variability of toxin genes

The discovery could help researchers better understand how the toxic fungus is successfully invading California and open the door for new drug discovery pathways.  Read the full article at: https://news.wisc.edu/death-cap-mushrooms-invasion-success-may-be-linked-to-newly-documented-variability-of-toxin-genes/

Student Perspectives: Ashley Cheung

By: Ashley Cheung This past April, I was a panelist at the Wisconsin Energy Institute’s 2023 Climate Teach-In. Students, faculty and community members joined at Memorial Union to learn from each other about climate solutions. We taught each other about everything from campus food recovery efforts to global temperature monitoring programs. I contributed what I …

Sowing Interest in Botany at Science Expeditions

The Gilroy, Maeda, and Spalding labs participated in the 2023 campus-wide Science Expeditions outreach event on April 16. They joined five other plant cell and molecular biology labs from different UW departments to create a row of eight substations where families with children peered through microscopes, painted with plant pigments, or sowed seeds in a …