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 MS thesis defense

Justin Roch
August 28, 2023 at 1pm
Dissertation Title: Molecular phylogenetics and geometric morphometrics reveal possible cryptic species within the solitary bees Melissodes agilis and M. trinodis (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

OEB PhD candidate Jacob Barnett leading teaching workshop

Jake was selected to share his expertise on active learning as part of OPD's Teaching Academy — a series of teaching workshops for UMass grad students and postdocs. Check out details here. Congratulations, Jake!

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

OEB PhD candidate Alex Winsor wins first prize in student paper competition

Alex Winsor won first prize in the student paper competition at the annual meeting of the American Arachnological Society at the Cornell University. His paper was called "Visual object categorization in the jumping spider brain". Congrats, Alex!