Achievement

Applied Biodiversity Science IGERT students and faculty have been working on the linkages between social attitudes towards water, water quality, ecosystem health, and evolutionary change in freshwater streams of central Mexico. Kristin Hurst, ABS associate working with ABS co-director Amanda Stronza, earned her M.Sc. studying how local communities manage water and analyzing attitudes towards water issues. The first Ph.D. from the ABS IGERT, Zachary Culumber, is now Coordinator of the CICHAZ field station, Mexico, and a post doctoral researcher funded by CONACyT, Mexico’s federal science agency. Dr. Culumber is conducting studies integrating physiology, genetics, and water quality. Current ABS Associate PhD student Pablo Delclos developed a partnership with colleagues at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo, Mexico, to study the relationship between pollution, community structure, and the expression of sexually-selected traits.