From Infectious Selflessness: How an Ant Colony Becomes a Social Immune System.

Rebeca Rosengaus of Northeastern University was impressed with the variety of experiments and analyses in the new study, which she says “provides further support that social immunity is a real phenomenon, not only in ants, but also in termites and probably eusocial wasps and bees, too.” In earlier work Rosengaus discovered that termites exposed to a fungus warn one another by “essentially having a seizure”—hopping around like crazy and banging their heads against their nest walls to keep healthy peers away. She also found evidence that ants spread immunity to bacterial infections by transmitting immune proteins in droplets of food passed from one ant’s mouth to another. “It goes against what you might think. Because there are so many individuals living so closely together, if one gets sick, chances are someone else would get sick, but through social immunization the entire colony seems to be doing better.”

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Here’s another reason to cheer for the little guy. A new study co-authored by Matthew Bracken, assistant professor of biology in Northeastern’s College of Science, has found that rare species from the bottom of the food chain can have a large impact on an ecosystem’s health.

The findings were published in March in the online edition of the scientific journal Ecology Letters.

Bracken and Brown University student Natalie Low conducted several experiments that analyzed the impact of removing seaweed and sessile animals, such as mussels and barnacles, from the rocky shores of Northeastern’s Marine Science Center in Nahant, Mass. The experiments were designed to mimic naturally occurring changes in biodiversity on rocky shores.

To read the full article, please visit this link.

Biology graduate student Meredith Doellman and faculty researchers from Northeastern’s Marine Science Center in Nahant, Mass., have discovered that a specific species of snail has a much more complex evolutionary history than previously thought.

Doellman worked with biology professors Geoff Trussell and Steve Vollmer and discovered that a marine periwinkle snail species, Littorina saxatillis, has defied simple textbook classifications of speciation — that is, the formation of new and distinct species in the course of evolution — by combining two types of speciation, an evolutionary strategy not seen before.

To read the full article, please visit this link.

Congrats to our graduates of 2012.  We were able to get a lovely spring campus photo of staff, faculty and a few of our EES seniors. Best of luck to everyone with jobs, grad school, and of course making this world a better place because you are all so awesome.  The senior luncheon last week was a smashing success, with plenty of cake for everyone.  Be sure to keep in touch with the Department because we would love to hear how you are doing.

The Office of Student Affairs presented the annual class of Northeastern University’s “100 Most Influential Seniors.” Student who have been selected to this esteemed list exhibit the following qualities: Personal Commitment to enhancing student life; Self-Motivation to make the Northeastern experience the best it can be; Ability to influence peers and campus as a whole in a positive manner; Overall academic success; Effective time-management skills that allow the student to balance academics with extracurricular involvement; Excellent interpersonal skills and proven ability to collaborate with fellow students, faculty, and/or administrators on issues of interest.

Faculty, administrators, staff, coaches, and students nominated students over the course of the semester, and the following Earth and Environmental Science students were included in this list and determined to be the “most influential” of this year’s senior class:

Alyssa Pandolfi (Environmental Science)
Dale Till (Environmental Science & International Affairs)
Warren Hagist (Environmental Studies/International Affairs)
Gwen Kidera (Environmental Studies/International Affairs)
Anastasia Zankowsky (Environmental Studies/International Affairs)

Jessica Feldish from Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Justin Roberts from Chemistry are winners of the 2012 Muckenhoupt Award. The award is for students who, “will use their training in science to benefit the environment of the earth and the life upon it.” Both Jess and Justin have exemplary records in areas of environmental sciences that reach far beyond their excellent academic records.