Enos Wins 2016 Biology Department Deer Competition

Lynch elected to serve on the Seed Savers Exchange Board of Directors

The migration of the monarch butterflies to Mexico has begun, and the Luther College entomology class will host a monarch butterfly migration banding event in Anderson Prairie on the Luther College campus from 1:30-4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 18.

An ecosystem's complexity can be seen in the symbiotic relationships among the different species. Human interactions with their own landscape can either promote or hinder these relationships between the components of a given ecosystem.

Doug Tallamy will give two lectures explaining these concepts at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 20, and Wednesday, Sept. 21, in Valders Hall of Science Room 206 on the Luther College campus. Both lectures are open to the public with no charge for admission.

Tricia Serres '16, Clare Slagel '16, and Drew Van Anrooy '16 are featured in the Spring 2016 Alumni Magazine for their successes in both academics and athletics.

Luther Professor of Biology Jodi Enos-Berlage invites us to experience Body of Water, a unique pairing of biology and dance, that encourages audiences to rethink water and what it means for survival.

Luther College biology was well represented at the recent national meetings of the Entomological Society of America in Minneapolis November 15-18, 2015. 

Beth Lynch co-authored three recent papers resulting from collaborative research funded by the National Science Foundation: "Presence of lakes and wetlands decreases resilience of jack pine ecosystems to late-Holocene climatic changes" in Canadian Journal of Forest Research; "Geophysical features influence the climate change sensitivity of northern Wisconsin pine and oak forests" in Ecological Applications; and "Taking the long view: Integrating recorded, archeological, paleoecological, and evolutionary data into ecological restoration" in International Journal of Plant Sciences.

Amy Morey has been awarded the John Henry Comstock Graduate Student Award. It was presented to her at the 2015 Entomological Society of America annual meeting.

Beth Lynch and Mary Lewis were awarded the 2015 Lawrence and Eula Hagie Heritage Award given by Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation (INHF).

The Genetics Society of America and the C. elegans research community announced in July that Luther College junior Jenna Johnson was one of only four undergraduate students awarded an honor at the GSA poster awards at the 20th International C. elegans Meeting.

Out of the 80 billion pounds of plastic made per year in the United States, 75 percent will end up in waste streams after little to no use. Laura Boran, Luther College senior of Brainerd, Minnesota, is researching new ways to help alleviate this global issue. This summer she is attempting to create a new bioplastic, an alternative to petroleum-based plastic.