- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Her project, “Assessing Preservation of Chemical Compounds in Pressed Plants," will focus 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 said. "This project will inform my lab's future investigations into effects of urbanization and climate change on insect herbivores."
Individual awards ranged from $15,000 to $36,000, or totalling $300,000. This is the 15th year that Hellman fellowships have been awarded to UC Davis faculty. San Francisco philathropists Warren and Chris Hellman established the program in 1995 in partnership with their daughter Frances Hellman, then a newly tenured member of the UC San Diego faculty, and now a professor of physics at UC Berkeley.
Meinke, a native of Greenville, N.C., joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology on March 1, 2020, from the Harvard University Herbaria. As a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow, she studied how urbanization and climate change have affected plant-insect relationships worldwide over the past 100-plus years.
Emily 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, studying with major professors Steven Frank and Robert Dunn. Her dissertation: "Understanding the Consequences of Urban Warming for Street Trees and Their Insect Pests."
Meineke joins three other UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty as recipients of Hellman Fellowships:
- Community ecologist Rachel Vannette, now an associate professor, won the award 2018. (See news story)
- Honey bee scientist Brian Johnson, now an associate professor, received the award in 2015. (See news story)
- Community ecologist Louie Yang, now a professor, won the award in 2012. (See news story)
Although the Hellmans ended their annual fellowship funding on all UC campuses two years ago, they provided endowments to the UC campuses ($6 million to UC Davis) to enable “fellowships in perpetuity,” according to a UC Davis news story.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The Hellman Family Foundation contributes funds to support and encourage the research of promising assistant professors who exhibit potential for great distinction in their research. The fellowship is designed to support research and creative activities that will promote career advancement.
Vannette's project, “Characterizing the Structure and Function of Pollinator Microbiomes,” will investigate the communities of bacteria and fungi in flowers and pollinators including bees and hummingbirds. “Our work to date suggests that microbes in flowers are common and influence pollinator behavior,” says Vannette. The current funding will allow her to link microbial communities in flowers with their influence on pollinators by examining microbial modification of nectar and pollen chemistry, and examine how microbial effects vary among plant and pollinator species, and with environmental variation.
The 11 assistant professors will receive a total of $244,000 in grants for research in a wide range of disciplines. Since 2008, UC Davis has received nearly $3 million in Hellman grants, awarded to 136 early-career faculty members. The Hellman Fund provides grant monies to early career faculty on all 10 UC campuses, as well as to four private institutions.
Vannette is one of two recipients from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. The other is Frances Moore, an assistant professor, Environmental Science and Policy. Her project title: "Quantifying the Costs of Ecosystem Damages from Climate Change for Improved Climate Policy Analysis.”
The community ecologist joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology in 2015 after serving as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's biology department, where she was a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow from 2011 to 2015 and examined the role of nectar chemistry in community assembly of yeasts and plant-pollinator interactions.
Vannette received her bachelor of science degree, summa cum laude, in 2006 from Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich., and her doctorate from the University of Michigan's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Ann Arbor, in 2011. Her thesis: “Whose Phenotype Is It Anyway? The Complex Role of Species Interactions and Resource Availability in Determining the Expression of Plant Defense Phenotype and Community Consequences.”
(Editor's Note: See UC Davis Dateline story on 11 recipients)
