Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Rice University is addressing important ecological and evolutionary questions with collaborative research initiatives and innovative ecological, evolutionary, and genomic tools.
Our mission is to provide outstanding education and research training at the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral levels while advancing our research programs. We offer excellent research facilities housed in attractive laboratories. In addition, there are federal, state, and private refuges, parks, experimental stations, and preserves available for field research within the city or driving distance of the campus. Habitats include southeastern coastal plain forests; coastal prairies; fresh, brackish, and saline marshes; estuaries; and near-shore marine environments. Moreover, Houston is host to numerous centers providing state-of-the-art environments to conduct genome analyses and bioinformatics. Our department has close ties with excellent programs in those areas on and off campus, including the bioinformatics program of the Rice Computer Sciences, Department of Statistics, the Department of Biochemistry and Cellular Biology, and the newly established graduate program in Systems and Synthetic Biology.
Faculty members also carry on research in other areas of the United States including Arizona, Louisiana, New Mexico, Virginia, and Guam as well as abroad in Madagascar, Germany, and China. We have a national and international body of faculty and students, including individuals from throughout the U.S., China, Egypt, Germany, Israel, India, Madagascar, and Mexico, to mention a few.
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Biochemistry & Cell Biology merge to form BioSciences at Rice.
Sreyasi Biswas and Eslam Eshahat recipients of the Diana McSherry and Patrick Poe Endowed Fellowship in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Watch the 2014 Tropical Biology video.
Next year EBIO320 will travel to Brazil.
Science report coauthored by Scott Egan featured in Futurity , ScienceNOW, and Rice News.
Adrienne Correa receives Brown Teaching Grant
Onja Razafindratsima receives Autrey Fellowship for 2014-15.
We are happy to introduce our newest Faculty members, Julia Saltz and Scott Egan.
Scott Solomon interviewed as part of PBS feature on crazy ants. see it here
Congratulations to EEB Graduate students Patrick Clay (NSF GRFP)and Onja Razafindratsima (Schlumberger) on their recent fellowship awards and to EEB Graduate student Michelle Sneck and Undergraduate students Preeya Bhavsar and Cathy Cheng for their Sigma Xi Grants-in-Aid of Research
EEB Graduate Student Eslam Elshahat's talk was named best natural sciences presentation at the Rice Graduate Student 90-Second Thesis competition
Scott Solomon was on KUHF Public Radio's "Houston Matters" talking about invasive species in Texas Listen to the segment
EBIO 327 Inventory at Big Thicket featured in the Winter 2014 edition of Rice At Large.
Congratulations to Ben Van Allen for having the best presentation at the Rice EEB Graduate Science Day and to Michelle Sneck for her honorable mention.
Emily Jones PNAS article featured in Rice News and Phys.org.
- Meirelles, L.A., Mendes, T.D., Solomon, S.E., Bueno, O.C., Pagnocca, F.C. and Rodrigues, A. (2014) Broad Escovopsis-inhibition activity of Pseudonocardia associated with Trachymyrmex ants. Environmental Microbiology Reports 6:339-345. doi:10.1111/1758-2229.12132
- Soria-Carrasco, V., Z. Gompert, A.A. Comeault, T.E. Farkas, T.L. Parchman, J.S. Johnson, C.A. Buerkle, J.L. Feder, J. Bast, T. Schwander, S.P. Egan, B.J. Crespi, & P. Nosil. 2014. Stick insect genomes reveal natural selection's role in parallel speciation. Science 344: 738-742.
- N. L. Rasmussen, B. Van Allen, V.H.W. Rudolf (in press) Linking phenological shifts to species interactions through size-mediated priority effects. Journal of Animal Ecology
- Miller, T.E.X. and J.A. Rudgers. (In press) Niche differentiation in the dynamics of host-symbiont interactions: symbiont prevalence as a coexistence problem. American Naturalist 183(4):
V.H.W. Rudolf, N. L. Rasmussen, C.J. Dibble, B.G. Van Allen 2014. Resolving the roles of body size and species identity in driving functional differences among consumers. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281:1781- Miller, T.E.X. 2014. Plant size and reproductive state affect the quantity and quality of rewards to animal mutualists. Journal of Ecology 102:496-507.
- Carrillo, J, McDermott, D, and Siemann, E. 2014. Loss of specificity: native but not invasive populations of Triadica sebifera vary in tolerance to different herbivores. Oecologia 174:863-871
Razafindratsima, O.H., Jones, T.A. and A.E. Dunham. 2013. Patterns of movement and seed dispersal by three lemur species. American Journal of Primatology 76:84-96.- Jones, E. I., S. L. Nuismer, and R. Gomulkiewicz. 2013. Revisiting Darwin's conundrum reveals a twist on the relationship between phylogenetic distance and invasibility. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1310247110
- Ott, J. R. and Egan, S. P. (In press), Interspecific patterns of phenotypic selection do not predict intraspecific patterns. Journal of Evolutionary Biology. 27:214-219.