News

Students from 2021's BIS 124 (Coastal Marine Research) class won first and third prize, plus two honorable mentions, in the 2022 Research Rockstars Undergrad Slam Video Contest. Congratulations to Su Chung and Yessica Gonzalez for winning first prize, Michaela Lai and Nicole Cox for winning third prize, and Tena Dhayalan, Adri Penix, Jacquie Rajerison, and May Schulz for their honorable mentions.

Watch the winning videos

A jellyfish might seem very different from a person, but studying the way the undersea creatures can heal themselves may eventually be applicable to humans, this month’s guest on Face to Face With Chancellor May said.

Coral reefs are home to a spectacular variety of fish. A new study by biologists at the University of California, Davis, shows that much of this diversity is driven by a relatively recent innovation among bony fish — feeding by biting prey from surfaces. The work is published the week of July 25 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Coastal and Marine Science Institute is pleased to announce the ten recipients of the UC Davis Bilinski fellowship at Bodega Marine Laboratory for 2022-2023. Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski’s life goal was to be “independent and challenged intellectually.” They strongly valued self-sufficiency, a sense of ambition, and above all, responsibility.

We are delighted to announce that Dr. Alyssa Griffin will start a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Davis on July 1, 2022!

We welcome Dr. Griffin’s continued collaboration with the Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute as she transitions from being a Postdoctoral Fellow to an Assistant Professor, and hope that you will join us in congratulating Dr. Griffin and welcoming her to this new role.

About Dr. Griffin:

UC Davis researchers and co-authors have published a paper reviewing the state of the science for environmental DNA (eDNA) methods in estuarine environments, like the ecologically important San Francisco Estuary. This genetics-based approach allows for the indirect detection of species of interest from environmental samples like water or soil.

Stress can test our limits to the utmost and, sometimes, it can push us to become more resilient than ever before. From the Bodega Marine Laboratory to the oyster flats of Tomales Bay, exploring how stress builds resilience has been at the heart of Priya Shukla’s research for the last several years. She is compiling a doctoral dissertation focused on how we might teach some species to tolerate warmer waters and in essence, “climate-proof” them against shifting temperatures.

The California Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project recovered more than 45 tons — 90,968 pounds — of lost, abandoned or otherwise discarded fishing gear along the Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego coasts and from around the Channel Islands in 2020 and 2021. The project is a program of the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

Public Scholarship and Engagement is proud to announce the inaugural cohort of UC Davis graduate students who were accepted into the competitive Public Scholars for the Future fellowship. This program, which launched in spring 2022 in partnership with UC Davis Graduate Studies, is designed to support doctoral students in developing community-engaged research with non-university partners.

CMSI Affiliates Hollis Jones (Ecology), Andrea Odell (Ecology), and Meghan Zulian (Earth and Planetary Sciences) are among the 11 doctoral candidates chosen.

Native species in California’s estuaries are expected to experience greater declines as invasive species interact with climate change, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.

The study, published in the Ecological Society of America’s journal, Ecology, said these declines are expected not only because of climate-related stressors, but also because of the expanding influence of new invasive predators whose impacts are occurring much farther up the estuary.