Division of Natural Sciences

Can evolutionary rescue help even long-lived species from going extinct?

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:44:14 +0000

Can evolutionary rescue help even long-lived species from going extinct? Rachel Sauer Tue, 06/09/2026 - 11:44

Tiffany Plate

Two CU ��Ĵ�ý researchers are helping clarify how species’ populations with longer lives can still adapt to a changing climate

Our warming climate is leaving many plant and animal species with a choice: either adapt, find a new home or risk extinction. Fortunately, throughout the history of life on Earth, a concept called evolutionary rescue has stepped in to help species adapt to new environments and climates.

Evolutionary rescue is a biological process where natural selection favors the individuals of a species that carry genetics best suited to the new climate. These individuals are more likely to survive and reproduce and are therefore able to better propagate future generations to ensure survival of the species.

Scott Nordstrom (left) earned his PhD from CU ��Ĵ�ý in 2023 under the advisorship of Brett Melbourne. (right), professor of ecology and evolutionary biology (Left photo from Scott Nordstrom; right photo from Brett Melbourne)

For example, a smaller bat may be better able to weather a hot summer with multiple heat waves. Or a monkeyflower that's better able to retain water in its leaves may have a better chance of surviving a megadrought. These genetic anomalies help move the population toward survival, instead of extinction.

In the face of anthropogenic climate change, however, conservationists are worried that species with the longest life spans—like giant pandas, elephants, or sequoia trees, for which new generations take years to decades—will be too slow to adapt and avoid extinction.

A mathematical model developed by Scott Nordstrom (PhDEBio’23) proved that that’s not always the case, however. As part of his doctoral dissertation, Nordstrom, in partnership with Brett Melbourne, a ��Ĵ�ý professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, set out to determine just how true it was that long-lived species were resigned to their fate. Their findings were published in The American Naturalist in May 2026.

Their model contributes to conversations about conservation, especially when it comes to extinction concerns. “A lot of the more endangered species or the populations that are at higher risk of extinction tend to be longer lived,” says Nordstrom. “So, it's especially relevant for thinking about conservation.”

Shifting focus: From flour beetles to tortoises

Before taking on this project, Nordstrom and Melbourne had been working with colleagues at Colorado State University to understand the evolutionary rescue patterns of flour beetles, which live for about a month before a new generation is birthed.

“We found that genetic diversity of the population is really critical for allowing rapid adaptation to occur,” says Melbourne. “And that got us thinking about how things could be really different for longer-lived species.”

Large tree species, like the Giant Sequoia, can live for thousands of years, but are now more endangered than ever due to increased wildfire activity in the American West. (Photo: Pexels)

The researchers set out t try to understand how relevant their findings were to species with longer lives.

Experimental work tracking the genetic variations in generations of long-lived species was not possible, however, so the pair created the next best thing: A flexible mathematical model and computer simulations that would allow them to map out potential evolutionary patterns of these species.

For each simulation, they input a sample population into the model, using “good” environmental factors (i.e., the climate that they were already adapted to). Then they switched those factors to “bad” (i.e., a climate with warmer temperatures or less water).

“Each individual’s survival depended on how well it was adapted to its environment, so when the environment shifted from good to bad, survival was low and the populations started shrinking,” says Nordstrom.

“But because there was genetic variation within the populations, some individuals were slightly better adapted to the bad environment, and those individuals were more likely to survive and pass on their genes, allowing the population to adapt,” he adds.

When nurture beats nature

Through their simulations, Nordstrom and Melbourne were also surprised to find that long-lived species can experience a complicated evolutionary dynamic in which a population’s traits seem to decouple from their genetics. In these cases, some random environmental event has affected an organism's trait in a way that turns out to be an advantage in the changed environment.

For example, an American alligator might be genetically predisposed to weigh 600 pounds but actually weighs 400 pounds because environmental factors impeded its growth in early development. Perhaps the alligator was born in a drought year, when typical prey like fish and turtles were scarce.

Ultimately, that smaller alligator may be able to survive heat extremes better in a hotter climate, thus slowing the rate of population decline. And because they are long-lived (up to 50 years), there is a good chance that there will be multiple small alligators in a population at once, thus changing the composition of that population in a way that slows the rate of population decline, allowing adaptation time to catch up and prevent extinction, the researchers speculate.

Researchers have long thought that species like the American alligator, which can live up to 50 years, are less likely to benefit from evolutionary rescue to help them adapt to changes in the climate of their habitats. (Photo: Unsplash)

Interestingly, those chances are much less likely to occur to short-lived species like flour beetles. Nordstrom says that’s because their short life spans don’t allow for their non-genetic phenotypic variation (like that seen in the undersized alligators) to remain in the population as time progresses; instead, only their genes are passed on to their offspring, and their offspring will thus not inherit their size advantage.

“The flour beetles just mate once and pass their genes forward,” says Nordstrom. “Next generation, repeat.”

That means that natural selection occurring within a generation can be important for evolutionary rescue in long-lived species. Previously, it was speculated that only evolution between generations determined whether populations could adapt to new conditions in time.

“This process of rescue is one part evolution and one part demography,” says Nordstrom. “In the race of evolution versus demography, this definitely helps the demography because it slows down population decline.”

He adds that this will be surprising to researchers who have up to this point only considered the evolutionary component here. “But we showed that the demography is actually super important, too.”

While Nordstrom and Melbourne can’t say that all long-lived species will benefit from their demography, Nordstrom says it’s important for future researchers and conservation managers to know that evolutionary rescue is not out of the question for endangered species like pandas and bison.

“Maybe it's a little bit more complicated than we thought,” says Nordstrom. “But this is the first major study finding that it’s not necessarily true that slower generational turnover guarantees that adaptation and evolution will be slower.”

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Two CU ��Ĵ�ý researchers are helping clarify how species’ populations with longer lives can still adapt to a changing climate.

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Think all that plastic is being recycled? Think again

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 21:19:22 +0000

Think all that plastic is being recycled? Think again Rachel Sauer Thu, 06/04/2026 - 15:19

Ellen Considine

A lot of ‘recycled’ plastic is being burned overseas—and causing widespread pollution linked to health problems

Picture a pile of trash the size of Manhattan and taller than one and a half Empire State Buildings. That’s how much plastic waste the world is predicted to be generating every year by 2050 if nothing is done to change course.

It’s easy to think of recycling as the solution, but the vast majority of plastic waste now ends up in landfills, or worse.

A large amount of plastic waste gets shipped overseas. In a new study, my colleague and I analyzed what happens when plastic waste is shipped to lower- and middle-income countries, where open burning is a common way of dealing with excess waste. The result, we found, is pronounced increases in toxic air pollution.

Ellen Considine is a CU ��Ĵ�ý assistant professor of geography and fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

Plastic waste burning and health impacts

Between 40% and 65% of total municipal solid waste is openly burned in low- and middle-income countries, largely as a result of 2 billion people around the world having no municipal solid waste collection.

Open burning occurs both intentionally and unintentionally, the latter when open dump sites containing organic waste spontaneously combust due to heat generated as the waste degrades.

When plastic burns, it releases particularly toxic air pollutants. Fine particles can penetrate deep into people’s bodies, along with gases that include carbon monoxide, styrene gas and hydrogen cyanide. It also releases persistent organic pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins. These particles and gases have been linked to health risks ranging from respiratory and cardiovascular disease to cancer and reproductive and neurological disorders.

The ash from open burning can also contaminate soil and groundwater with persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals and other toxicants, creating more chances for people to be exposed to them through food and water.

The global plastic waste trade

Large amounts of plastic waste are shipped around the world – some to be recycled and much to simply be disposed of in landfills or incinerated. In 2024, 9.34 million metric tons of plastic waste imports were reported, according to the United Nations.

Where this exported plastic waste ends up has been shifting.

In 2018, China stopped importing plastic waste, causing the total amount of plastic waste moving among countries – at least through official channels – to drop dramatically. Between 1992 and 2016, China’s plastic waste imports made up 45% of global imports.

In 2018, the flow moved to other countries, largely in Southeast Asia but also other locations, including Turkey. In 2018, Indonesia became a net importer of plastic waste. The majority of this waste came from Western Europe, Australia and North America.

What happened to Indonesia’s air quality

We harnessed data from multiple monitoring systems, including satellite observations and cargo ship tracking signals, to understand where these plastic waste imports went and how much air pollution was released by openly burning this waste.

As of 2020, the World Economic Forum and Indonesia’s government estimated that 48% of Indonesia’s plastic waste is openly burned.

We found that particulate matter air pollution – of great concern for health – increased an average of 3.3% at the locations of large open waste dump sites in Indonesia after China’s ban in 2018-19 relative to expected business as usual, based on data from 2012-17. We found increases up to 1.68 micrograms per cubic meter.

Based on risk estimates from a global study of mortality associated with long-term exposure to outdoor fine particulate matter, this corresponds to an approximate 1.5%, 1.9% and 3.5% increase in mortality risk from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and lower respiratory infections, respectively.

New constraints on the plastic waste trade

In 2021, Indonesia restricted the import of nonhazardous waste to 15 specific ports and in 2025 banned the import of plastic waste altogether.

A man walking amid plastic waste on the Maldivian island of Thilafushi. (Photo: Dying Regime/Wikimedia Commons)

In mid-2025, Malaysia followed suit, allowing plastic waste only from countries that have ratified the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal – a treaty that the U.S. has never ratified.

For these bans to be effective, these countries must also find ways to contend with illegal plastic waste shipments and paper imports contaminated by plastic waste.

Meanwhile, negotiations for an international, legally binding treaty on plastic waste, started in 2022, have stalled. In mid-2024 the European Union did pass a new regulation on waste shipments, prohibiting exporting plastic waste to countries outside the group of wealthy countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development from November 2026 to at least May 2029.

The effectiveness of these and future policies at reducing air pollution – and other kinds of environmental degradation – can be evaluated using methods like ours.

Ways to reduce plastic waste

As of 2021, only 5% to 6% of U.S. domestic plastic waste was recycled, according to estimates from the advocacy group Beyond Plastics and Bennington College. It is now even harder to export plastic waste to other countries that could “recycle” it.

Part of the problem is lack of capacity: The Association of Plastic Recyclers estimates that current plastic reclamation facilities in the U.S. and Canada could at most increase their plastic recycling by 35% to 44%, depending on the type of plastic, leading to a total recycling rate of 7% to 9%.

Ultimately, both decreasing plastic use and increasing recycling will likely be needed to solve the problem. Beyond consumer choices, packaging reuse – creating packaging and return systems that put the same materials back to work – can reduce the need for new plastics.

Recycling experts call for harmonized design standards to help streamline processing and deliver higher-quality recycled plastics, as well as extended producer responsibility fees or taxes to raise the cost of producing products that aren’t recyclable. The fees can provide needed funding to scale up recycling and other programs to reduce generation of plastic waste.

Since 2021, seven states have enacted extended producer responsibility laws focused on packaging: Maine, Oregon, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Washington and Maryland. However, it will take time to see the effects. Colorado’s final implementation plan, authorized in 2022, was approved only in late 2025. The first payment of extended producer responsibility fees to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment are scheduled to begin in mid-2026.

Ultimately, reducing and better managing our nation’s plastic waste can help prevent global health harms.

Ellen Considine is an assistant professor in the CU ��Ĵ�ý Department of Geography whose research lies at the intersection of environmental change, health and wellbeing and data science.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A lot of ‘recycled’ plastic is being burned overseas—and causing widespread pollution linked to health problems.

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Undergraduate Isabella Perrin named 2026 Cech Fellow

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 23:12:39 +0000

Undergraduate Isabella Perrin named 2026 Cech Fellow Rachel Sauer Wed, 06/03/2026 - 17:12

The newly established fellowship, named in honor of CU ��Ĵ�ý Professor Thomas Cech, gives students opportunities for research, professional mentorship and career exploration

Isabella Perrin, a ��Ĵ�ý undergraduate student studying molecular, cellular and developmental biology and public health, has been selected as one of 176 inaugural Cech Fellows by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

The fellowship, awarded to an inaugural cohort of undergraduates from 109 institutions in 36 states and territories, is named in honor of Nobel laureate Thomas Cech, a CU ��Ĵ�ý distinguished professor of biochemistry, former HHMI president and current HHMI investigator.

The Cech Fellows will spend nine weeks this summer conducting hands-on research with HHMI scientists at universities and research institutions across the country, as well as at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus in Virginia. They will contribute to research while receiving professional mentorship and exploring potential careers in biological and biomedical research.

"I’ve always believed that getting students into real research environments early is one of the most powerful things we can do for them and for science,” said Cech. “I’m deeply honored that this program carries my name, and I look forward to seeing what this first cohort of Fellows will go on to achieve.”

Leslie Vosshall, HHMI vice president and chief scientific officer, noted that a single summer in the right lab can kickstart a scientific career: “By asking real questions alongside scientists at the top of their fields, this year’s Cech Fellows will have the opportunity to see what a life in science actually looks like.”

Perrin, who is working with researchers at the University of California Berkeley this summer on immunology research about the pathways and mechanisms that relate to autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, has previously conducted RNA research with Robin Dowell, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, and Mary Ann Allen, a research associate professor with the BioFrontiers Institute.

“As a Cech Fellow, I’m honored and excited to join a diverse community with engaging and curiosity-filled science research,” Perrin said. “I value this opportunity not only to learn from mentors and peers about how to conduct meaningful research but also to engage in research that, at its core, is based in bettering individuals’ quality of life.

“I hope to learn and use new skills to contribute to the field in a rigorous manner, and to use a creative mindset to approach challenging questions. I love learning about the capabilities and quirks of the immune system and am thrilled to be a part of a lab that focuses on applying this work to human health conditions.”

Summer research experiences are “often where undergraduates discover their passion for scientific inquiry,” said Joshua Hall, HHMI lead senior director and scientific program officer at HHMI. “The Cech Fellows Program gives talented students direct access to some of the most exciting science happening anywhere in the country, and we’re thrilled to welcome this inaugural cohort.”

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The newly established fellowship, named in honor of CU ��Ĵ�ý Professor Thomas Cech, gives students opportunities for research, professional mentorship and career exploration.

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CU ��Ĵ�ý debuts $33.5 million renovation to general chemistry labs

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 14:45:03 +0000

CU ��Ĵ�ý debuts $33.5 million renovation to general chemistry labs Rachel Sauer Tue, 06/02/2026 - 08:45

Bradley Worrell

The recently completed project increases the number of labs from 12 to 14 and includes a multitude of modernization and safety improvements

The ��Ĵ�ý Department of Chemistry recently debuted a new suite of general chemistry teaching labs in the Ekeley Sciences Building, part of a $33.5 million renovation project.

While Ekeley has had some updates over the years, the building was originally constructed in 1898, and the general chemistry spaces needed many improvements related to modernization, eco-conscious updates and safety optimization, said Chris Marelli, director of the general chemistry teaching labs. Funding for the project came from a mix of sources including the President’s Initiative, campus cash reserves and bond debt.

Students participate in a chemistry class in one of the newly renovated lab spaces.

Designed with both functionality and flexibility in mind, these updated lab spaces blend advanced technology with intentional design, Marelli said. Technological upgrades include a video calling system that allows graduate teaching assistants a direct line to lab staff during emergencies, updated engineering controls for improved safety, new HVAC systems for increased air flow and new touch-control fume hoods for improved safety. Additionally, new lighting and new A/V systems with projectors and screens or widescreen TVs replaced chalkboards. These new A/V technologies bring more state-of-the-art teaching into the labs, Marelli said.

The addition of wheelchair-accessible workstations in seven labs creates spaces that are both adaptable and inclusive, while collaborative workstations further support active learning, Marelli said. Three adjacent help rooms were also added, which can be configured as separate spaces or combined into a larger instructional area to accommodate varying instructional needs.

“All of the remodeling was completed with the goal of creating a better learning experience for students,” Marelli said. “These updated facilities will benefit not just our chemistry majors but all arts and sciences students who enroll in an undergraduate chemistry lab.”

To support the goal of making hands-on general chemistry learning accessible to such a wide student population, the number of general chemistry labs was increased from 12 to 14 during the renovation, thanks to creative spatial redesigns, Marelli said. The renovation prioritized efficient usage of the existing building footprint while widening hallways for safer pedestrian traffic patterns during class changeover periods, relocating the three help rooms and integrating better storage solutions into the lab spaces.

“We were at maximum capacity in our labs before; we can now accommodate an additional 400 students, allowing room for us to continue to grow our program moving forward,” Marelli said. The renovated labs will be able to accommodate an additional 1,000 students each year, he added.

Construction on the renovated lab spaces began in December 2025 and was spearheaded by Adolfson & Peterson Construction (A&P). Marelli and two of the general chemistry lab coordinators, Avery Hatch and Estrella Lastre, participated in meetings with A&P to provide insight into how students would use the lab spaces and helped guide project decisions for the renovation.

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The recently completed project increases the number of labs from 12 to 14 and includes a multitude of modernization and safety improvements.

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Matthew Olm named a 2026 Boettcher Investigator

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 29 May 2026 17:10:55 +0000

Matthew Olm named a 2026 Boettcher Investigator Rachel Sauer Fri, 05/29/2026 - 11:10

Grant will support Olm’s research on how diet and lifestyle shape the infant gut microbiome and immune disease risk

Matthew Olm, a ��Ĵ�ý assistant professor of integrative physiology, has been named a member of the 2026 class of Boettcher Investigators.

Olm is one of eight early-career biomedical researchers at four leading Colorado academic and research institutions who each will receive a $250,000 grant through the Boettcher Foundation’s Webb-Waring Biomedical Research Awards Program to fund up to three years of independent scientific research.

The Webb-Waring Biomedical Research Awards provide critical early-career support and position recipients to compete for additional private, state and federal research funding while helping Colorado retain top scientific talent, according to the Boettcher Foundation.

Matthew Olm, a ��Ĵ�ý assistant professor of integrative physiology, has been named a member of the 2026 class of Boettcher Investigators.

“The awards are critical to Colorado’s future because of the investment in researchers at one of the most important stages of their careers, when bold ideas have the potential to create lasting impact,” said Katie Kramer, president and CEO of the Boettcher Foundation, in an announcement of the awards. “Colorado’s leadership in bioscience depends on ensuring that emerging researchers have the resources to pursue innovative work.”

The Boettcher grant will support Olm’s research on how diet and lifestyle shape the infant gut microbiome and immune disease risk.

“Immune diseases like asthma, allergies and type 1 diabetes have exploded in industrialized countries over the past 100 years, but they are still rare in non-industrialized settings,” Olm says. “The microbes that colonize infant guts in the first year of life appear to be critical for training the human immune system, and we hypothesize that something about modern life is disrupting this process. This funding gives us the ability to compare infant microbiomes across the globe using cutting-edge immunological and bioinformatics techniques. We hope this work will ultimately lead to the development of strategies to restore the infant microbiome to its historical state to prevent immune diseases before they start.”

Olm, who earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Pittsburgh and his PhD at the University of California Berkeley, leads the Integrative Microbiome Research Laboratory, where he and his research colleagues study the human microbiome as “an entire ecosystem of microscopic organisms that live on our skin and inside our body. These microbes are integrated into our immune, digestive and nervous systems and are critical to our overall wellbeing.”

Olm and his colleagues aim to increase understanding of the human microbiome and its connections to physiology and to apply these findings to improve human health using cutting-edge, computer-based analysis and experimental techniques to study the microbiome.

The lab’s current research topics include:

From where do we get our microbiome? How do our microbes spread from person to person?
How does the infant gut microbiome influence the development of allergies and auto-immune disease?
How does our intestinal immune system control our gut microbiome? How do failures in this control lead to disease?

About the awards program

Since it began, the Webb-Waring Biomedical Research Awards Program has supported 121 Boettcher Investigators, including this year’s class, and awarded almost $29 million in grant funding. These researchers have gone on to secure more than $150 million in additional research funding from federal, state and private sources. The Boettcher Foundation’s Webb-Waring Biomedical Research Awards strengthen the state’s long-term competitiveness by helping emerging investigators accelerate breakthroughs for patients.

“Colorado’s future as a leading hub for health innovation depends on bold scientific thinking and sustained investment in emerging researchers,” said Elyse Blazevich, president and CEO of the Colorado BioScience Association, in an announcement of the awards. “The Boettcher Investigators are advancing high-impact discoveries across some of the most urgent challenges in human health while strengthening Colorado’s position as a center for biomedical research and innovation. These awards help accelerate breakthrough science, support exceptional talent, and reinforce the collaborative research environment that sets Colorado apart.”

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Grant will support Olm’s research on how diet and lifestyle shape the infant gut microbiome and immune disease risk.

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Making a political turn in the fight for animal rights

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 21 May 2026 12:30:47 +0000

Making a political turn in the fight for animal rights Rachel Sauer Thu, 05/21/2026 - 06:30

Tiffany Plate

A new journal article by CU ��Ĵ�ý PhD student Dayton Martindale argues that animal rights isn’t just about an absence of suffering—it’s about giving them agency

As a second grader, Dayton Martindale was pretty sure he knew what his career path would look like: He was going to be the host of a show on Animal Planet. It made sense, given how much he enjoyed being around animals and learning about them.

Around that time Martindale also started to understand that humans are mammals, just like many of the animals he loved. “I think that just stuck with me,” he says. “It affected how I looked at animals and saw them as more like myself.”

CU ��Ĵ�ý PhD student Dayton Martindale grew up with animals and knew from an early age that he wanted to work to protect them in some way. (Photo: Dayton Martindale)

That was the beginning of a lifetime of philosophical and moral explorations of animal rights, culminating in his current PhD work in environmental studies at the ��Ĵ�ý. And he’s been especially prolific this year: He’s had six articles published since late 2025, all centered around two themes: How do we view animals as agents who desire their freedom, and how do we treat animal welfare as an object of public and political concern?

One article, which was published in March 2026 in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, pushes past the common thought that animal welfare simply means ending the most egregious animal abuses, giving farm animals more space to roam or taking captive animals out of small zoo enclosures—to the point of actually giving animals agency.

“This paper was meant to be a sort of stepping-stone,” says Martindale. “It’s building toward what I want to do for my dissertation, which is to reach conservation practitioners and policymakers and advocates, and to think about how non-human animals’ interests and agency can be listened to in decision-making spaces.”

The argument for agency

Martindale’s article, “Liberty, Equality, Animality: On Freedom and Nonhuman Agency,” was first drafted in his Conceptual Foundations of Environmental Studies class (taught by his advisor Ben Hale).

The argument confronts the question of whether animals care about having free will over their own lives. “In a lot of animal ethics conversations, there's a big focus on reducing animal suffering, without a positive vision of what a good life for animals actually looks like,” says Martindale. “Both in philosophy and in animal behavior and science, there is a lot of evidence that animals have interests in exercising agency and making choices.”

Scholar Dayton Martindale argues that freeing animals from captivity and a life of suffering is just the first step in giving them a good life. (Photo: Pexels)

One of the most common examples of this, Martindale says, is something called “contrafreeloading.” The concept is that many animals prefer to work for food rather than get it freely, and that they like to be actively engaged in their surroundings.

Contrafreeloading has been studied in a wide range of species—from dogs to chickens to human children—showing that they will often ignore a free bowl of food and instead choose to complete a task to get that food, Martindale says. “Scientists interpret this as there being some reward in doing the task itself.”

Martindale cites another study, in which researchers monitored giant pandas’ stress levels when they were confined to an exhibit area or given the choice to move between the exhibit or a private enclosure. “When the pandas had more freedom to move—even if they mostly stayed in the exhibit—just knowing they could move around reduced their stress levels,” Martindale says.

Experiments in other species show that other controls, like being able to change the lights in their enclosure, or to choose the order in which they completed a task, also seemed to make them calmer and happier, he says.

“I think there are limits on what can be accomplished in a zoo, especially for larger species,” says Martindale. “But what’s interesting about the framework in this paper is that it can provide a long-term aspiration—of no enclosures, or no cages at all—but it also can guide shorter term, small actions, whether in a zoo or in my house.”  

One way Martindale puts it into action in his own home is by delivering food to his shelter mutt, Geo, in a puzzle feeder, which requires him to work for his meals. Martindale also often lets Geo choose their route on a walk or takes him to parks and open spaces where he can be off leash.

Dayton Martindale and dog Geo take advantage of all of ��Ĵ�ý’s hiking trails, like this one in Eldorado Canyon State Park, but they especially appreciate areas where Geo has more freedom to roam off leash through the city’s Voice and Sight Program. (Photo: Dayton Martindale)

“What’s interesting is he's way better behaved off leash than on,” says Martindale. “On leash he’s always pulling. But off leash he can go sniff where he wants, but he'll also turn around whenever I call his name in a way that he doesn’t when he’s on a leash.” It’s almost as if Geo is reciprocating the respect Martindale is showing him by giving him his freedom.

A shift in the movement

The themes of the article parallel what Martindale describes as a “political turn” in the animal rights discussion in the last 15 years. Activists are now exploring how to establish institutions and infrastructure that can give animals, including wildlife and domestic pets, more agency.

“Traditionally, a lot of animal ethics was saying, ‘here's why you shouldn't eat meat, and why we shouldn't test on animals, and here's why we shouldn't have zoos,’” Martindale says, adding that 50 years of telling people to be vegan has had somewhat limited success. “The political turn is saying: That's all great, but what are the institutions that societies need to either achieve these goals or represent animals in some way?”

Martindale cites ��Ĵ�ý’s Voice and Sight Program, as well as its off-leash dog parks, as a good example of how we can institutionally support animal agency. Another instance, he says, is the New York City Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare, which administers programs that encourage co-habitation with wildlife or promote humane solutions for reducing community cat populations.

He hopes that his writing, both academic and non-academic, might reach policymakers who plan urban spaces for dogs, relax leash laws or even install wildlife crossings over busy highways.

Putting action into practice

Currently in the third year of his PhD studies, Dayton recently defended his prospectus, which will cover ethical and political relationships with wild animals.

Prior to his PhD work, Martindale spent years working as a journalist and writer, exploring the intersection of animal rights, politics and the environment. Post doctorate, he’s hoping he can continue writing in the area of policy or advocacy work. “I love all this research, but I want it to feel connected to, informed by and relevant to social change.”

“I think animals are really interesting, intellectually, philosophically and scientifically. But that's not why I'm in this. It’s because trillions of them are tortured and killed every year. And because humans are animals too, and our own well-being on this planet is tied up in sharing it well.”

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A new journal article by CU ��Ĵ�ý PhD student Dayton Martindale argues that animal rights isn’t just about an absence of suffering—it’s about giving them agency.

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Scholars apply economic analysis to ecological research

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 20 May 2026 21:25:35 +0000

Scholars apply economic analysis to ecological research Rachel Sauer Wed, 05/20/2026 - 15:25

Rachel Sauer

In research published today, recent PhD graduate Asia Kaiser details how synthetic control methods estimated significant declines in bee observations when traditional analyses didn’t

Since it launched in 2008 as a UC Berkeley student’s master's project, the iNaturalist platform has been a source of both fascination and frustration for researchers.

The hundreds of millions of observations about the natural world logged by both professional and citizen scientists around the globe are a treasure trove of information about biodiversity. But is that data usable in research? The prevailing sentiment has veered toward doubt, skepticism or an outright “no.”

“I think the feeling has been, ‘Oh, because this data is just being collected opportunistically by nature enthusiasts and not in a standardized, rigorous way, it can’t be used in scientific research,’” says Asia Kaiser, who earlier this month earned her PhD in the ��Ĵ�ý Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “If you haven’t planned out data collection in advance, a lot of researchers hesitate to use it.”

Recent PhD graduate Asia Kaiser studied how synthetic control methods estimated significant declines in bee observations when traditional analyses didn’t.

There had to be a way, Kaiser thought, to tap into the vast cache of information logged into iNaturalist without sacrificing scientific rigor, especially data collected in urban environments. The answer, it turned out, lay in economics.

In research published today, Kaiser and co-authors Julian Resasco and Laura Dee, both associate professors of ecology and evolutionary biology, detail how combining iNaturalist records with synthetic control methods, originally used in economics, estimated a significant decline in bee observations in Philadelphia during the two years following Hurricane Ida in 2021, while conventional ecological analyses didn’t detect the decline.

“Basically, the inspiration for this project was thinking about causal inference in ecology,” Kaiser explains. “When we have observational data, can we actually use that to ask questions about drivers of biodiversity?”

‘You can’t just go into people’s backyards’

These questions dovetailed neatly with Kaiser’s research focus, which is bees—specifically, how human land use affects different insect groups and, consequently, the ecosystem services they provide in coupled human-natural systems. Among her research aims is understanding biodiversity in urban environments, improving the resilience of urban agroecosystems, increasing equitable access to fresh produce and promoting environmental justice in cities.

However, monitoring biodiversity and evaluating drivers of change in urban environments is confounded by several issues: “Cities are mosaics of land-use types, including parks, private properties, buildings, roads and industrial zones,” Kaiser writes in the paper. “As a result, sampling efforts can be complicated by permission and safety issues, and leaving unattended sampling equipment in the field brings a higher risk of theft, tampering and vandalism in cities.

“Given these challenges, measuring biodiversity in cities requires different tools and data streams than those used in natural ecosystems. Participatory science data is a promising solution for monitoring biodiversity in cities; cities are the land use type with some of the highest upload volumes of data to participatory science platforms, largely because upload frequency is strongly influenced by population density.”

Despite the abundance of participatory science data in platforms like iNaturalist, researchers have hesitated to draw from it, relying instead on randomized, controlled and replicable experiments to identify and estimate causal relationships. That kind of science, Kaiser says, becomes more difficult in urban environments due to sampling challenges and historical legacies that shape different neighborhoods, among other reasons.

“If you’re studying a natural area, you could get a permit and go sample all over, but you can’t do that in a city,” Kaiser says. “Even if you get a permit, you can’t just go into people’s backyards.”

The idea of how to bridge the gap between the abundance of iNaturalist data logged in urban areas and the rigor expected in scientific research came to Kaiser when she was assigned to watch a lecture given by a Nobel laureate in economics. The lecture topic was synthetic control methods, which originated in economics as a way to create a nonexistent control group that allows for comparisons between real-world groups before and after an event or intervention.

One of the most famous uses of synthetic control methods in economics was in estimating the impact of Germany’s reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall on the gross domestic product (GDP) of western Germany. Economists created a “synthetic” Germany from economic data to study GDP with and without reunification.

Though synthetic control methods hadn’t been widely used in ecology research, “I thought it could be adopted with iNaturalist data,” Kaiser explains. She was further interested in studying the effects of Hurricane Ida on her home city of Philadelphia, which included significant flooding.

“If you’re studying a natural area, you could get a permit and go sample all over, but you can’t do that in a city. Even if you get a permit, you can’t just go into people’s backyards,” explains CU ��Ĵ�ý scientist Asia Kaiser about the challenges of ecological research in urban areas. (Photo: Sandy Millar/Unsplash)

“Even though it didn’t have a huge impact on people per se, the effects of the hurricane were really dramatic. Looking at the water levels, the stream gauges had their highest values ever in the 100 years that they’ve been measuring. My feeling was that would have a pretty big impact on bees, because if you look at bee biodiversity, bees are pretty sensitive to precipitation and water. The ones that nest in the ground are really affected by huge flooding events.”

Declines following a hurricane

To apply synthetic control methods to ecological research, Kaiser and her colleagues drew data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, which collects research-grade iNaturalist data—that which includes, among other points, latitude and longitude, collection date and time and correct identification—as a proxy for bee abundance in Philadelphia.

They analyzed for bee population declines and, in addition to synthetic control methods, also performed the more traditional methods of interrupted time series regression, before-after control impact regression and before-after regression.

Kaiser and her colleagues found that synthetic control estimated a 15.5%—20.9% decline in bee observations in the two years following Hurricane Ida. In contrast, the three more common ecological analyses didn’t detect this decline.

“That was an amazing moment, seeing this decline in the data and better understanding how iNaturalist data may be able to help us look at the impact of unusual climate events—things that are happening more and more these days, like huge fires, huge floods, abnormally warm winters,” Kaiser says. “Unless you were already collecting data in a region before, you can’t really see the impact before the event, but synthetic control methods might be able to help us in those situations.”

Kaiser adds that this method also might be useful for looking at the effect of policy interventions. For example, the city of ��Ĵ�ý is establishing pollinator corridors, and Kaiser sees potential in using this method to draw from iNaturalist data in studying the outcomes of these corridors.

Scientists who reviewed the paper expressed excitement and skepticism about using synthetic control methods in ecological research, Kaiser says: “They asked questions about whether or not the decline I’m seeing is a true thing that’s happening or an artifact of the way data has been collected. iNaturalist is very sensitive to observers—wealthy neighborhoods have higher uploads, areas around research universities have higher uploads—but this statistical method can help control for those things.”

Thanks to the professional and citizen scientists gathering data and sharing it on iNaturalist, Kaiser says she sees potential to apply synthetic control methods to a range of ecological research. For example, “using the bee biodiversity that’s collected on iNaturalist, does that correlate with how well flowers are being pollinated? I think that’s something we’ll be able to study.”

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In research published today, recent PhD graduate Asia Kaiser details how synthetic control methods estimated significant declines in bee observations when traditional analyses didn’t.

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Fly agaric has a long association with fairies and humans

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 20 May 2026 19:01:01 +0000

Fly agaric has a long association with fairies and humans Rachel Sauer Wed, 05/20/2026 - 13:01

Jeff Mitton

Since the Renaissance, fly agaric has appeared in art and literature, frequently associated with fairies, trolls, wizards, witches and other mystical creatures

The most iconic and easily identified mushroom in the world is Amanita muscaria, or fly agaric. It grows around the world at northern latitudes in association with spruces, pines, birches and aspens, with its roots forming mutually beneficial mycorrhizal associations to exchange water and nutrients. It is easy to recognize, for it has a bright red cap, and all else white: stipe (stem), gills (underside of cap) and crumbles of the egg sac on the cap. These bright, contrasting colors make it easy to find and identify in a forest.

Fly agaric's bright, contrasting colors evolved to advertise their molecular defenses, muscimol and ibotenic acid. Unless an herbivore has evolved a way to combat activities of these compounds, these defenses are toxic and hallucinogenic, triggering severe and prolonged vomiting and loss of coordination and balance.

These colorful mushrooms and their psychoactive compounds have been associated with mankind for about 10,000 years. The association started with shamans in northern Europe and Siberia, who used the mushrooms during religious ceremonies to imagine communication with gods, ancestors and spirits. Similarly, they could be an ecstatic inebriant to enliven celebrations of winter solstice and the return of sunlight.

From the 13th through the 19th centuries, fly agaric was commonly used to kill flies in European homes and buildings. Flies were abundant before the invention of screens on windows and doors, and they were dreaded, thanks to a rumor that they get into the head and cause insanity. The practice came about after it was discovered that dried crumbs of fly agaric dropped into milk attracted flies, and when the flies sipped the milk, the ibotenic acid paralyzed and ultimately killed them. The common name fly agaric stems from this practice—agaric is the name for the familiar toadstool-shaped mushroom. Its formal name is Amanita muscaria: Amanita is the genus of mushrooms, and muscaria is a reference to the common housefly, Musca domestica.

Since the Renaissance, fly agaric has appeared in art and literature, frequently associated with fairies, trolls, wizards, witches and other mystical creatures in fairy tales and books for children. Recent examples will be most familiar. Dancing red-and-white mushrooms appear in Fantasia. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice converses with a hookah-smoking caterpillar sitting on a gigantic red-and-white mushroom. Fly agaric also appears in Snow White and the Seven Dwarf. Smurfs are small, blue, humanoid creatures living in red-and-white, hollowed-out mushrooms.

Laplanders, who use reindeer as work animals, saw their reindeer eat fly agaric and subsequently romp and stagger. Laplander herdsmen believed that reindeer sought fly agaric for its psychoactive reward. The Laplanders also used fly agaric to achieve an ecstatic and imaginative state, and it is possible that they were at the root of the Christmas story of flying reindeer led by a jolly man dressed in the colors of the mushroom who enters a dwelling via its chimney. Perhaps this entry recalled shamans who would enter a dwelling through the smoke hole in the roof, delivering sacks of colorful mushrooms to fuel a celebration. The Christmas Story appeared in 1823 in a poem referred to as "A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore.

A red cap dotted with the dried crumbles of the egg sac make fly agaric easy to find and identify. (Photo: Jeff Mitton)

More than 600 described species in the genus Amanita occupy the full range from deadly (death cap, A. phalloides; destroying angel, A. bisporigera) to delicious (blusher, A. rubescens; Caesar's mushroom, A. caesarea). With so many species and such dire consequences for a mistaken identification, you should be trained before collecting fly agarics from the forest for personal use.

While hiking at the University of Colorado's Mountain Research Station, I came across a cluster of fly agaric mushrooms. I was surprised to find several divots in the cap—something small, the size of a bird or chipmunk, had taken bites. Who was eating fly agaric?

Reindeer have four chambered stomachs with microbial fermentation, which allows them to digest the cellulose in plant cell walls. All ruminants—including cattle, sheep, goats and bison, eat fly agaric without discomfort.

Another group of animals that can enjoy fly agaric with impunity is squirrels (family Sciuridae), and every squirrel species that I checked (pine, grey, fox, golden mantled ground squirrel, rocks squirrels, chipmunks) eat fly agaric and use a unique method to safely pass the toxin. Squirrels have a novel glycoprotein lining in their intestines that immediately binds the toxins, inactivating them, and escorting them the rest of the way through the digestive tract.

Photographers have amply documented foxes gulping down hunks of fly agaric, but they suffer the agony of severe, prolonged vomiting and staggering that omnivores generally experience. Foxes may be sly, but not when it comes to choosing ingredients for a salad.

Meanwhile, turkeys, grouse, crows, ravens and jays eat fly agaric without distress, but many birds suffer both gastrointestinal distress and severe neurological symptoms.

It is thought provoking to discover an area here in Colorado where the bright mushrooms are popping up, for the association of humans and fly agaric has multiple facets and reaches far back into time. Aposematic coloration reliably warns of the defensive substances (muscimol and ibotenic acid), foreshadowing gastrointestinal misery and eruption for some species. Like all other molecular defenses, one or more species have evolved a way around the defenses and evolved to use them either as food or as an intoxicant.

Ten thousand years ago shamans used the same molecules to produce altered states in their followers for ceremonies and celebrations. Artists and writers brought back inspiration from altered states, and today we have enchanting fairy tales and numerous imaginary creatures to entertain and stimulate imaginations. Each year, families drape festive lights and children listen for the sound of hooves on the roof and a cheerful voice encouraging his reindeer.

For scientists, the chemistries of muscimol and ibotenic acid provide insight into chemical ecology of natural populations and enhance the pleasures of a walk in the woods.

Jeff Mitton is a professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the ��Ĵ�ý. His column, "Natural Selections," is also printed in the ��Ĵ�ý Daily Camera.

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Since the Renaissance, fly agaric has appeared in art and literature, frequently associated with fairies, trolls, wizards, witches and other mystical creatures.

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Top photo: A cluster of fly agaric mushrooms show variation of size, shape and color (Photo: Jeff Mitton)

Scholar exercised science muscles in the gym

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 11 May 2026 16:36:25 +0000

Scholar exercised science muscles in the gym Rachel Sauer Mon, 05/11/2026 - 10:36

Cody DeBos

In new memoir, senior aging researcher Doug Seals chronicles the work of science when conditions aren’t ideal

Imagine a biomedical research laboratory. Chances are, visions of gleaming equipment, climate-controlled rooms, and the hum of precision instruments come to mind.

But what if that lab was really a century-old gymnasium plagued by electrical outages, noise and temperatures that swing with the seasons? Those are just some of the challenges Doug Seals faced while establishing one of the most productive aging research programs in the country.

Seals, a distinguished professor in the ��Ĵ�ý Department of Integrative Physiology, recently published a memoir chronicling more than four decades in biomedical research. In his own words, the book isn’t all about the science; it’s also about what it takes to succeed when conditions aren’t in your favor.

Doug Seals, a distinguished professor in the CU ��Ĵ�ý Department of Integrative Physiology, recently published a memoir chronicling more than four decades in biomedical research.

An unlikely scientist

Seals grew up in an under-educated family, his parents having only elementary school educations, and was the first in his extended family to attend college. As an undergraduate, he majored in education and business administration hoping to coach football.

A research career wasn’t on his radar.

“However, the program had a mandatory requirement to perform a research thesis, and I discovered that I really liked the research process,” Seals says.

That discovery set him on the path to where he is today.

Seals went on to earn his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then completed his postdoctoral training at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and at the University of Iowa before landing his first faculty position. He would eventually join CU ��Ĵ�ý’s Department of Integrative Physiology (the Department of Kinesiology at the time) in 1992.

“Each stop along the journey provides a learning opportunity, and you take the new tool and add it to your toolbox,” he reflects.

Seals’ new memoir details the unique trajectory of his career and how little of it was the byproduct of elite circumstances.

“I had no conventional mentoring in graduate school (I did not belong to a ‘laboratory’), so I learned how to work on my own, independently,” he says, “which turned out to be helpful later.”

Bringing science to the gym

The title of Seals’ memoir, A Life of Science—In Gyms, isn’t a metaphor. For 30 years, Seals and a small group of colleagues ran NIH -funded research programs out of Carlson Gymnasium on the CU ��Ĵ�ý campus before moving out in 2020. The building, constructed in the 1920s, was never designed with biomedical research in mind.

Yet Seals and the other faculty found a way to make it work.

His idea for the book grew out of a period of reflection during the pandemic.

“As I was writing a series of personal commentaries during and post-pandemic, I began to think about penning a memoir of my unusual life of science in gyms,” he says.

He started by authoring a historical scientific article about the Carlson years, then realized the story was bigger than could be told in a journal piece.

“I decided to expand that story to include my earlier life and more details about the challenges I have overcome, which necessitated the longer narrative format of a memoir.”

The stories he chose to include during the writing process are, by his own account, the ones readers may find most compelling, particularly how Seals and his colleagues built a top academic research department at CU ��Ĵ�ý.

“For example, I share how I obtained the funds to start the first research seminar series in the department . . . the challenges we faced performing NIH-funded research in an old gym designed for sport and how I eventually took matters into my own hands to upgrade our research facilities when the campus did not do so,” he says.

In his memoir, Doug Seals details the "challenges we faced performing NIH-funded research in an old gym designed for sport."

Despite the conditions, his lab secured continuous NIH funding, produced more than 350 peer-reviewed publications and trained more than 300 scientists across career stages from undergraduate to junior faculty.

Living long and living well

Woven through the memoir’s recap of institutional challenges is the science Seals has dedicated his career to. His lab’s central focus is the concept of extending “healthspan”—not just how long we live, but how long we live well.

“In biomedical aging research, ‘healthspan’ generally refers to the period of life that you retain good physical and cognitive function and are free of serious disease, whereas ‘lifespan’ is the entire period of life,” Seals explains.

He notes the two don’t always align. A long life shadowed by disability or chronic disease is a far different proposition than one that stays healthy into its final decades.

Seals has spent 40 years researching what tips the scale in favor of the latter.

Seals has clear advice for those seeking to improve their healthspan: “If I could recommend that people do only one thing, it would be to exercise regularly—to be physically active. No other strategy comes close to exerting the health benefits of regular exercise on physical and cognitive function and prevention of chronic diseases,” he says.

Diet, not smoking, and other factors matter.

“But the effects of regular exercise cannot be fully mimicked by any other lifestyle behavior or pill,” Seals adds.

In control of your fate

One of the more challenging aspects of writing the memoir, Seals admits, was choosing what to talk about.

“The most difficult challenge was trying to make the book compelling to both scientists and non-scientists. I wanted to provide a lot of ‘insider insight’ for the layperson, while not boring academics reading the story,” he says.

Through his careful curation of stories, the message he hopes to land is straightforward.

“The main message of the memoir is that you don’t need to come from the most educated family background, attend the most elite institutes of higher education, join the faculty of a top-ranked department or have the best research facilities to achieve and sustain success in your profession,” he says.

“You are the ‘master of your fate,’ not your environment. Your determination, creativity and resilience are much more important to the outcome than external factors,” Seals adds.

Seals lived this lesson before ever writing it down. Sitting atop the resume of a 41-year career built, improbably, in a gymnasium, he fears the perspective that has carried him through it all is going out of fashion.

“I worry that more recent generations may not fully understand this simple point of view,” he says.

The memoir is his attempt to make sure they do.

For anyone who has ever felt that the odds are stacked against them, Seals offers one last reminder: “Your personal agency is much more important in achieving your life goals than your immediate environment.”

A preview of A Life of Science—In Gyms! can be accessed at Physiology.org.

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In new memoir, CU ��Ĵ�ý senior aging researcher Doug Seals chronicles the work of science when conditions aren’t ideal.

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Top image: Carlson Gymnasium

Come for the beer, stay for the science

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 08 May 2026 00:07:52 +0000

Come for the beer, stay for the science Rachel Sauer Thu, 05/07/2026 - 18:07

Rachel Sauer

The May 11 Earth on Tap event at Rayback Collective in ��Ĵ�ý, open to all, invites scientists and non-scientists to gather for discussions of climate research

It started, as good things often do, with CAKE. In this case, that’s the Climate Action Knowledge Exchange, a group formed by ��Ĵ�ý atmospheric and oceanic sciences (ATOC) graduate students Max Elling, Dora Shlosberg and Josh Gooch. They noticed, the further they progressed in their studies, that there are “a lot of different people working in climate, but not necessarily working together,” explains Shlosberg, a PhD student.

If you go

What: Earth on Tap

When: 5:45-7:30 p.m. Monday, May 11

Where: Rayback Collective, 2775 Valmont Road in ��Ĵ�ý

Who: All are invited

Learn more

So, they formed an interdisciplinary outreach group, CAKE, to break down silos and build partnerships between scholars, industry professionals and community members. From there, CAKE began collaborating with ATOC’s existing Outreach Committee, a group dedicated to educating the public on Earth science through engaging and interactive learning. Outreach teaches children through their SEEDS program, bringing live demonstrations on Earth-system science to local elementary schools.

Then, last semester, they began discussing what more they could be doing to involve adults in science, particularly those who aren’t professional scientists but are science curious.

Earth on Tap organizers express that there has been a lot of misinformation spread about science, and there is sometimes an element of mystery among the public as to what it is local scientists do. Earth on Tap aims to break down these barriers and connect people of all backgrounds to the science being done in their own backyard.

The key is to make it fun, says ATOC PhD student Maggie Scholer. But how?

The answer: Beer.

Not to make the science go down easier, but as a tool to bring science out of the lab and field research sites and into spaces where all are welcome, where community grows, where learning can happen with a chocolate stout and a shared plate of sliders. So, that’s how Earth on Tap came to be.

An event at which all ages are welcome—though you’ll have to show ID if you want that beer—Earth on Tap features climate scientists discussing their research with a focus on how it applies to and affects the broader community.

The second Earth on Tap will be from 5:45-7:30 p.m. Monday, May 11, at the Rayback Collective in ��Ĵ�ý. Kyle Manley, an interdisciplinary climate scientist, and Molly Wieringa, a postdoctoral fellow with the National Center for Atmospheric research, will discuss fires and public land recreation as well as sea ice and polar climate engineering.

Telling science stories

Monday’s Earth on Tap topic is especially timely, Josh Gooch says, because he and his ATOC colleagues frequently discuss how “to communicate how abnormal this winter has been and contextualize it to the future. Each week we have a weather discussion that one of our professors leads, and we get these branching discussions of, ‘If we make up the precipitation deficit in the future, what does that mean in terms of more fuel for wildfires?’ So, one of our goals (with Earth on Tap) is to set the context of what current weather events that are occurring on the Front Range may lead to in future seasons. That’s a concern that a lot of people share.”

Max Elling, an ATOC PhD student and researcher in the Oceans and Climate Lab, notes that the ��Ĵ�ý area is interesting because of its large population of scientists as well as its population of non-scientists, who are nevertheless involved in Earth science, yet there still can be a disconnect between the research that’s happening in this area and what community members know about it.

“With Earth on Tap, we’re learning more about what people are curious about,” Elling says, adding that he and his colleagues are learning to better understand their audiences and tailor their outreach style accordingly.

“We have an inherent language that we use as scientists, certain acronyms, and we’re taught to present at conferences where everyone is aware of this language,” Gooch says. “We need to be more aware of situations where an audience member might not be as familiar because they don’t interface with these things every day.”

Jonah Shaw, a post-doctoral associate at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) who spoke at the inaugural Earth on Tap in January, adds that all of his communication training in graduate school was in a conference environment, which doesn’t necessarily translate to climate discussions over beers at the Rayback.

“Something that I think is really important when you’re communicating within a scientific field is a story, but it becomes even more important when you’re communicating with the general public,” Shaw says. “It’s meeting people where they are, so for me, instead of talking about what I do on a day-to-day basis, I talked about a satellite mission I worked on, the story of that mission. I was talking about the narrative aspects and connecting with people’s experiences, and I was incredibly excited to see how well attended it was by non-scientists. Everyone is in their own realm and able to connect (with the science) in their own way.”

Scholer says that Earth on Tap organizers learn from event to event how to better involve audience members in the presentation, including trivia questions with prizes and QR codes that people can scan to submit questions if they’re not inclined to raise their hand. Ideally, she adds, people will come to Earth on Tap and have a great time and be more inclined to take climate action when opportunities arise.

“I think, especially in atmospheric science, ideally the outcome of what we do in the field is actionable for policy makers,” says ATOC PhD student Lucas Howard. “I think having the public more informed about not just the science in terms of outcomes, in terms of uncertainty, but the process of what goes into generating the science, can only have good downstream effects.”

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The May 11 Earth on Tap event at Rayback Collective in ��Ĵ�ý, open to all, invites scientists and non-scientists to gather for discussions of climate research.

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