Stay in the know with LEC News, Events, and Opportunities

May 2025

We’re excited to announce the launch of three new working groups supporting the Urban Biodiversity pillar of the Living Earth Collaborative: Urban Biodiversity & Access to Nature, Urban Heat, and Water.

These working groups are a direct outcome of the ideas and momentum generated at the Making Saint Louis the Nature City of the 21st Century symposium. Each group will define its own scope while bridging science, application, implementation, and policy to advance urban biodiversity efforts in our region.

We look forward to how these groups will build on and amplify the incredible work already happening across St. Louis.

Learn more about the scope and objectives on the Working Group website. 

Missouri Botanical Garden is hiring a Hyperspectral Scanning Assistant to help advance cutting-edge research in species identification. This is an exciting opportunity to gain hands-on experience with the Revolutionizing Species Identification project at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

To apply, visit the Job Posting and for more information, contact Matt Austin at maustin@mobot.org.

Please share with anyone who might be interested!

The AZA Reproductive Management Center at the Saint Louis Zoo is hiring a RMC Assistant to support the contraceptive programs. For more information, visit the Job Posting. 

To apply, email a brief paragraph mentioning how you heard about this position, your major(s) and year in school, and why you are interested in this position, along with an updated resume or CV to Monica McDonald (mmcdonald@stlzoo.org).

Applications are due May 16, 2025. 

Save the Date: June 16-17, 2025
Washington D.C. and Online 

 The Convocation on the Status of Informal Science and Engineering Education is a two-day gathering that will bring together researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and funders to reflect on how the field has evolved over the past 15 years. Building on the 2009 National Academies report Learning Science in Informal Environments, the event will explore its influence, examine current trends, surface key challenges and solutions, and highlight promising directions for the future.

Registration details and full agenda are available on the event site.

A team of researchers from WashU, the Missouri Botanical Garden, UMSL, and UT-Austin — including Biodiversity Fellows, Sebastián Tello, Nathan Muchhala, and Jonathan Myers — has revealed how tropical forests generate astonishing chemical diversity. Their findings, published in Ecology in an article titled "Testing the role of biotic interactions in shaping elevational diversity gradients: An ecological metabolomics approach," show that each tree species uses unique chemical defenses. Read the Ecology article here.

To keep your Biodiversity Fellow profile up to date on the Living Earth Collaborative website, please take a few minutes to complete this short update form:

Looking for WashU undergraduates to support your research? Create or update your research mentor profile on the LEC website by completing this short form:

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