- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Meineke, an assistant professor who joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty in 2020, is one of 10 faculty members to receive the honor from the ESA Governing Board. She will be recognized at ESA's Aug. 6-11 meeting in Portland, Ore.
"This is one of the most prestigious awards an ecologist can receive," said nominator Rachel Vannette, community ecologist and associate professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
“Early Career Fellows are members within eight years of completing their doctoral training (or other terminal degree) who have advanced ecological knowledge and applications and show promise of continuing to make outstanding contributions to a wide range of fields served by ESA,” an ESA spokesperson announced. “They are elected for five years.”
Meineke received her bachelor of science degree in environmental science, with a minor in biology, in 2008 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She obtained her doctorate in entomology in 2016 from North Carolina State University (NCU), studying with major professors Steven Frank and Robert Dunn. She wrote her dissertation on "Understanding the Consequences of Urban Warming for Street Trees and Their Insect Pests."
At NCU, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded her with the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) fellowship. As an EPA STAR Fellow, Meineke pioneered research characterizing the effects of urban heat islands on insect herbivores. And, as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard University Herbaria, Meineke studied how urbanization and climate change have affected global plant–insect relationships over the past 100-plus years.
At UC Davis, the Meineke laboratory "leverages natural history collections, citywide experiments, and observations to characterize effects of recent anthropogenic change on plant–insect herbivore interactions," said Vannette. Meineke has received funding from the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development (NSF-CAREER) Program; USDA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI); and the UC Davis Hellman Fellows Program.
Hellman Award. In 2022, Meineke was named one of 12 recipients of the UC Davis Hellman Fellows program. Her project, “Assessing Preservation of Chemical Compounds in Pressed Plants," focuses on whether herbarium specimens collected over hundreds of years harbor chemical compounds that reveal mechanisms responsible for changing insect-plant interactions.
"In particular, the project will reveal extent to which herbarium specimens that are dried and stored continue to harbor key chemicals—such as defensive chemicals against insects created by plants themselves and pesticides—in their leaves," Meineke related. "This project will inform my lab's future investigations into effects of urbanization and climate change on insect herbivores."
Meineke is also coordinating her department's seminars for the 2022-23 academic year.
ESA President Sharon Collinge noted that "This year's Fellows (7) and Early Career Fellows (10) have made tremendous scientific and societal impacts through their work and are highly regarded in their subdisciplines. Their accomplishments reflect the breadth and depth of our field, and its relevance to pressing societal concerns. I am glad that ESA is home to such a dedicated group.” (See news release)
Holly Moeller of UC Santa Barbara, a theoretical ecologist who uses mathematical and empirical approaches to understand acquired metabolism, is among the 10 Early Career Fellows, all selected for advancing the science of ecology and showing promise for continuous contributions. Others are Karen Bailey, University of Colorado, Natalie Christian, University of Louisville; Mary Donovan, Arizona State University; Meredith Holgerson, Cornell University; Allison Louthan, Kansas State University; Sparkle Malone, Yale University; and Maria Natalia Umaña, University of Michigan.
Rick Karban. UC Davis Distinguished Professor Richard "Rick" Karban of the Department of Entomology and Nematology was elected an ESA fellow in 2017 for "pivotal work in developing an ecological understanding of plant-herbivore interactions, with particularly notable contributions to the ecology of induced plant responses to herbivory and plant volatile signaling."
ESA, founded in 1915 aims to promote ecological science by improving communication among ecologists; raise the public's level of awareness of the importance of ecological science; increase the resources available for the conduct of ecological science; and ensure the appropriate use of ecological science in environmental decision making by enhancing communication between the ecological community and policy-makers.
Related Resource:
Emily Meineke Helped Spearhead Harvard Museum of Natural History's Thoreau Project (Department News, April 5, 2022)
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Karban is an international authority on plant communication.
“Rick's pioneering discoveries on plant communication through volatile compounds certainly merit this recognition,” said Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
ESA, in announcing the list of 27 fellows, said that its fellowship program recognizes the many ways in which its members contribute to ecological research and discovery, communication, education and pedagogy, and management and policy.
Karban is the author of the newly published 240-page book, Plant Sensing and Communication (University of Chicago Press), considered a “landmark in its field,” said Graeme Ruxton of the University of St. Andrews, UK, co-author of Experimental Design for the Life Sciences and Plant-Animal Communication.
“Karban seeks to argue that plants behave—that they sense their environment, detect and communicate with an array of different organisms, and respond to their sense of the environment and communication,” Ruxton said. ”He is very successful in this, demonstrating that plant sensing and communication is a vibrant area of current research with still plenty more to discover.”
Karban has researched plant communication in sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) on the east side of the Sierra since 1995. His groundbreaking research on plant communication among kin, published in February 2013 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, drew international attention. In that study, Karban and his co-researchers found that kin have distinct advantages when it comes to plant communication, just as “the ability of many animals to recognize kin has allowed them to evolve diverse cooperative behaviors.”
“Plants responded more effectively to volatile cues from close relatives than from distant relatives in all four experiments and communication reduced levels of leaf damage experienced over the three growing seasons,” they wrote.
Karban is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and recipient of the 1990 George Mercer Award from ESA for outstanding research. He was named an outstanding professor, ecology, at UC Davis in 1986. He has published more than 100 journal articles and now, three books.
Karban is featured in the Dec. 23-30, 2013 edition of The New Yorker in Michael Pollan's piece, “The Intelligent Plant: Scientists Debate a New Way of Understanding Plants."
Karban received his bachelor's degree in environmental studies from Haverford (Penn.) College in 1977 and his doctorate in biology from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, in 1982. He served as a lecturer at Haverford College for six months before joining the UC Davis faculty in May 1982 as an assistant professor. He advanced to associate professor in 1988 and to full professor in 1994.
Karban's former graduate student, Anurag Agrawal, professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, was also elected a 2017 fellow for his “innovative contributions to community and evolutionary ecology, especially through providing conceptual advances and rigorous experimental work on plant-insect interactions.”
Agrawal received his doctorate at UC Davis in 1999.
Another UC Davis professor, John Stachowicz of the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology was elected as a 2017 fellow “for his fundamental contributions to the fields of symbiosis and mutualism, multi-trophic species interactions, biogeography, and invasion biology.”
ESA established its fellows program in 2012 with the goal of honoring its members and supporting their competitiveness and advancement to leadership positions in the Society, at their institutions, and in broader society, said spokesperson Lisa Lester.
(The Ecological Society of America, founded in 1915, is the world's largest community of professional ecologists, and committed to advancing the understanding of life on Earth. The 10,000 member Society publishes five journals and a membership bulletin and broadly shares ecological information through policy, media outreach, and education initiatives. The Society's Annual Meeting attracts 4,000 attendees and features the most recent advances in ecological science. Visit the ESA website at http://www.esa.org.)
Related Links:
Rick Karban: Kin Recognition Affects Plant Communication and Defense
Past ESA Fellows
TED-Ed Original Lessons: "Can Plants Talk to Each Other?"