Animal Behavior Graduate Group

Graduate Studies and Graduate Council are pleased to present awards for outstanding mentoring of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. The Distinguished Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentorship Awards recognize the vital role mentoring plays in the academic and professional development of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars at UC Davis. A letter of recognition and $1,000 will be conferred to each awardee.  

Congratulations to the following recipients:

About the size of a small school bus, the basking shark is the second largest fish in the ocean and is found in temperate and tropical waters across the globe. In the mid-1900s, basking sharks were observed by the thousands each year off California’s coast. Now they are rarely seen at all in this region, called the California Current Ecosystem, or CCE.

Read the Full Story Here!

Andrew Sih, who studies the evolution and ecological impacts of behavior on population patterns at the University of California, Davis, talks about his academic journey. 

Congratulations to Amelia Munson, Ph.D. Candidate in Animal Behavior, the 2021 UC Davis Grad Slam Final Round winner! She earned a $2,500 grand prize and the opportunity to advance to the University of California Grad Slam competition on May 7 with her winning presentation “Fact or Fiction: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger."  Despite the virtual format, this year's Grad Slam competition was the largest on record, with more prize money and even more attendees.

The UCD Animmal Behavior Graduate Group is congratulates student, Amelia Munson, who was one of ten students selected as finalists for this year's UCD Grad Slam!

Animal Behavior Graduate Group alum, Annie Valuska, has been in the press lately with her job as a behavioral scientist at dog and cat product company Purina. Check out the links below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6aiIjl4VdA&feature=emb_logo

The editors and contributors of the UCD Animal Behavior Graduate Group's The Ethogram were recently congratulated by the Animal Behavior Society (ABS) as one of the organization's 2020 Outreach Grant recipients.

The Ethogram was founded in 2014 as a formalized outreach effort by graduate students in the ABGG. The blog has since grown steadily, reaching nearly 17,000 visitors, in over 100 countries, in 2019 alone. The staff consists of multiple editors and over 20 contributors per year, ranging from undergraduates to faculty, both at UC Davis and other institutions.

Congratulations, to our very own Amelia Munson! Though UC Davis Graduate Studies canceled the 2020 UCD Grad Slam final, they're eager to reward and recognize the efforts of this year’s finalists awarding each of the ten finalists a prize amount of $625.

Click here for more about Amelia!

Dr. Brian Johnson and ABGG graduate student Adrian Perez have been awarded a three-year grant by Project Apis Mellifera and the National Honey Board for research focused on honey bee health. The project aims to use social network analysis to understand how honey bee colonies change their social interaction patterns in response to various pathogens, food availability, and other environmental factors. The funding mainly supports the set up of a tracking system that will allow for automated monitoring of thousands of workers in the hive.

Assistant Professor Rebecca Calisi Rodríguez, Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, is the subject of a new video from iBiology's "Background To Breakthrough" series. The video recounts Calisi Rodríguez's "experiences as a Mexican-Italian-American woman, professor, artist and mother have provided her with fascinating and unusual perspectives to study the biology of parental behavior.

Learn more about Dr. Calisi Rodríguez's story!