REU Site: Biological impacts of climate change: testing hypotheses with collections and long-term data

本科生（REU）网站的研究经验奖已经作出了加州大学，圣克鲁斯（UCSC）为八名学生在2013年至2015年的夏天提供为期八周的研究培训。气候变化是我们时代最重要的环境问题，它使许多物种的分布和丰度发生巨大变化，并可能威胁到人们的生活方式。该REU将培训学生使用关键工具来了解生物对气候变化的反应机制，包括：1）物种的生理/生态限制; 2）物种相互作用的变化;和3）假设检验，使人们能够区分气候变化和影响物种多样性和地理分布的其他自然或人为因素。学生将在UCSC部门的导师指导下研究生物体，系统和具体问题的多样性。生态学和进化生物学系环境研究所和一些区域组织。项目之间的共同点包括：1）测试假设; 2）从博物馆和教师研究中收集长期数据集; 3）测量关键的生理/行为特征或生态相互作用; 4）根据未来气候情景预测物种分布和/或生态系统的变化; 5）进行实地工作，以使其预测成为现实。该REU将根据他们的学术记录和研究潜力选择和培养24名本科生，其中包括许多少数民族学生。所有的学生都将得到指导，以帮助他们提高沟通技巧，发现他们的教育和职业资源，并认识和重视自己对科学的贡献。REU计划包括会谈，讨论和研讨会的方法和概念的关键，他们的项目，以及相关的实地考察。这些学生还将加入现有的UCSC本科研究计划，针对STEM学科的少数民族学生，参加科学伦理和沟通研讨会。学生将被跟踪，以确定他们对科学的持续兴趣，职业道路，以及他们的REU经验的持久影响。该计划将通过各种手段进行评估，包括REU通用评估工具。欲了解更多信息，请访问http：//reu.eeb.ucsc.edu/，或联系主要研究者（巴里辛内沃博士，网址：lizardrps@gmail.com）或共同主要研究者（月桂福克斯博士，网址：fox@ucsc.edu）。

A Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Sites award has been made to the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) to provide research training for eight students for eight weeks during the summers of 2013-2015. Climate change, the overriding environmental issue of our time, causes drastic changes in the distributions and abundances of many species and potentially threatens peoples' ways of life. This REU will train students to use critical tools to understand mechanisms underlying biological responses to climate change, including: 1) physiological/ecological limits of species; 2) changes in species' interactions; and 3) hypothesis testing that enables one to discriminate between climate change and other natural or anthropogenic factors affecting species diversity and geographical distributions. Students will work on a diversity of organisms, systems, and specific questions guided by mentors from UCSC's Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Dept. of Environmental Studies, and several regional organizations. The common threads among projects include 1) testing hypotheses; 2) assembling long-term data sets from museums and faculty research; 3) measuring key physiological/behavioral traits or ecological interactions; 4) predicting changes in species' distributions and/or ecosystems based on future climate scenarios; and 5) conducting field work to ground-truth their predictions. This REU will select and train 24 undergraduates, including many minority students, based on their academic records and research potential. All students will be mentored to help them improve communication skills, discover resources for their education and careers, and recognize and value their own contributions to science. The REU program includes talks, discussions and workshops on methods and concepts key to their projects, and relevant field trips. These students will also join with an existing UCSC undergraduate research program targeting minority students in STEM disciplines for workshops on scientific ethics and communication. Students will be tracked to determine their continued interest in science, career paths, and lasting influences of their REU experience. The program will be assessed by various means, including an REU common assessment tool. More information is available by visiting http://reu.eeb.ucsc.edu/, or by contacting the PI (Dr. Barry Sinervo at lizardrps@gmail.com) or the co-PI (Dr. Laurel Fox at fox@ucsc.edu).