Environmental Regulation of Biodiversity: An Integrated Multilevel Training Program

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A pressing crisis in environmental biology today is that the accelerating loss of biodiversity, globally and nationally, has outrun our fundamental knowledge of its causes and consequences. We are little able to predict or manage the future of most ecosystems and populations largely because our understanding of the complex environmental processes that generate and govern biodiversity is grossly incomplete and depends on a number of interacting taxonomic, temporal, and spatial scales. We focus our proposal for graduate training in environmental regulation of biodiversity on three major components of biodiversity: genetic diversity, species diversity, and habitat diversity. The University of Chicago's CEB provides and integrated, interdisciplinary PhD training program with participation arising from every Division of the University and three major non- academic Chicago research and educational institutions, the Field Museum, Brookfield Zoo, and Argonne National Laboratories. The environmental biodiversity training program will capitalize on our quantitative, empirical and theoretical strengths in ecology, biogeography, systematics, genetics, paleontology, behavior, and function. It will produce the next generation of leaders who can address the complexity and intrinsically interdisciplinary problems in this priority area. The CEB's deep-seated commitment to increasing recruitment and maintaining participation of underrepresented populations into environmental biology is represented by a range of innovative initiatives that utilize our unique structure and are based on personal, individualized efforts.