School of Biology and Ecology

health student

Maine is our campus

Read transcript The innovative Maine Track Program, a partnership between Maine Medical Center and the Tufts University School of Medicine, is building a pipeline of physicians with skills in rural Maine medicine. Learn about the program and hear from University of Maine graduates India Stewart and Kim Dao about their experiences in medical school and […]

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lake saros climate research

Biogeochemical links across Greenland key to understanding Arctic

The Kangerlussuaq region of southwest Greenland is a 3,728-square-mile corridor stretching from the ice sheet to the Labrador Sea. In this area near the top of the world, landscape and ecosystem diversity abounds. Flora and fauna range from microbes in the ice sheet to large herbivores — caribou and musk oxen — living on the […]

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Drummond, Venturini featured in Press Herald articles on bee research

Frank Drummond, a professor of insect ecology in the School of Biology and Ecology, spoke with the Portland Press Herald for the article, “The disappearance of Maine’s rusty patched bumblebee.” Drummond is the last known person to hold a Maine-born rusty patched bumblebee, according to the article. He held the bee in 2009 while his […]

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Student-Athlete-sigi koizar

Koizar earns ‘M’ Club Dean Smith Awards

School of Biology and Ecology senior Sigi Koizar was honored with the Dean Smith award for the second-straight year this week. Koizar, who plays for UMaine’s women’s basketball team, boasts a 3.97 grade point average in biology with a pre-medical concentration and a minor in chemistry. The award is named for Dean Smith, an electrical […]

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gill algae tar pit

Gill examines plants encased in tar pits to reconstruct ice age ecosystem

For tens of thousands of years, the warm, sticky natural asphalt that occasionally bubbled to the Earth’s surface in the area now called Los Angeles was a death sentence for some ice age animals. Woolly mammoths, camels, rabbits, horses, bison, sloths, rodents, snails, turtles, birds and saber-toothed cats perished after becoming mired in the liquid […]

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Venturini quoted in BDN article about newly protected bumblebee species

Eric Venturini, an assistant research scientist in the School of Biology and Ecology at the University of Maine, spoke with the Bangor Daily News about the new protection of the rusty patched bumblebee under the Endangered Species Act. The species will officially receive endangered status on Feb. 10, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife […]

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Radio Ecoshock Show interviews Gill about abrupt climate shifts, extinction

Jacquelyn Gill, a professor of paleoecology at the University of Maine, was a recent guest on the syndicated weekly Radio Ecoshock Show. The episode, “Welcome to the dark new climate,” focused on how creatures fell into extinction during abrupt climate shifts, sometimes within a single human lifetime. Gill said abrupt climate change hit species before […]

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