About OEB

OEB provides interdepartmental training for MS and PhD students in ecology, animal behavior, organismal biology and evolutionary biology. Graduate students, post-docs, and faculty study biological processes ranging from the molecular to the ecosystem level, often bridging the gap between basic and applied research. Our faculty and students conduct research in four broad areas:

Animal Behavior: Behavioral ecology, communication, learning
Ecology: Community ecology, population ecology, landscape ecology, conservation biology
Evolutionary Biology: Evolution, phylogenetics, population genetics, molecular evolution
Organismal Biology: Physiology, morphology, paleontology, developmental biology

News & Announcements

We are pleased to announce the following OEB PhD thesis defense

Katie Schroeder
March 7 at 10 AM
Dissertation Title: NESTLINGS AND NEURONS: EARLY LEARNING, AUDITORY PERCEPTION, AND SIGNAL EVOLUTION IN SONGBIRDS

Best talk and poster awards for OEB PhD students!

OEB PhD students Kim Avecedo and Adri Grow each won awards at the Pioneer Valley Microbiology Symposium!  Kim won the best Poster award, and Adri won the best talk award.  Congrats to both!

Congrats to OEB faculty and students for an exciting paper on fish body size change!

Lead author Josh Lonthair - along with OEB students Estefany Argueta and John Swenson, as well as OEB faculty Lisa Komoroske - and co-authors - all worked to publish an exciting paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology showing how fish change is related to ecoloy.  Congrats to all!

OEB PhD candidate Katrina Zarrella Smith awarded a NMFS-Sea Grant Fellowship

Katrina was selected to be the recipient of a 2023 National Marine Fisheries Service-Sea Grant Joint Fellowship. Her project is titled "Building a next-generation, climate-ready stock assessment informed by spatially explicit population processes". Since 1999, when the fellowship began, just over 120 individuals have been awarded this competitive fellowship. Amazing news, Katrina! More here.

We are pleased to announce the following OEB PhD dissertation defense

PhD candidate Luis Aguirre

Luis Aguirre
Tuesday, August 1, 2023
10:30 AM
Morrill 3 Room 222
Dissertation title: Contextual effects on pollination: assessing the effects of herbivory and diversity on plant-pollinator interactions