Modelscape Consortium Home

Welcome to the public webpages associated with the modelscape project. This consortium includes researchers at the University of Wyoming, the University of Nevada-Reno, and the University of Montana.

We initiated this consortium to address cross-cutting challenges in the analysis and representation of knowledge in the life sciences. In particular, we will learn about, develop, and share innovative approaches to obtain highly predictive and explanatory models. We will use our broad experience in ecology and evolution, and in modeling, to advance process-based understanding in the life sciences. The consortium will meet regularly through video conferencing across institutions and each year will gather in an inspiring location to share what we have learned and plan future work.

Our team consists of roughly twelve postdoctoral researchers and eight faculty members. Further information about the project is available and we encourage interested researchers to contact us about open positions and potential collaborations.

News and other blog posts from the consortium

Online talk by Dr. Chhaya Werner

Here is another talk by one of our consortium members, Dr. Chhaya Werner. In this 12 minute talk she presents a collaboration with consortium members Dr. Lauren Shoemaker and Dr. Topher Weiss-Lehman, and Dr. Lauren Hallett. They use sparse modeling to learn about direct and indirect causes of variation in population growth rates and advance our understanding of community ecology.…

Online talks by Dr. Bella Oleksy and Dr. Lauren Koenig

Check out 10 minute talks by two of our consortium members: Dr. Bella Oleksy https://isabellaoleksy.weebly.com/ and Dr. Lauren Koenig https://laurenkoenig.weebly.com/. They both gave highly informative and clear online talks at the virtual summit in “Incorporating Data Science and Open Science in Aquatic Research”. The results are very encouraging and both talks are inspiring! Dr.…

UW’s Shoemaker Named ESA Early Career Fellow

From Mar 25, 2021 UW press release http://www.uwyo.edu/uw/news/2021/03/uws-shoemaker-named-esa-early-career-fellow.html. Lauren Shoemaker, a University of Wyoming assistant professor in the Department of Botany, has been selected as a 2021-25 Early Career Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (ESA). The ESA is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of professional ecologists,…

Fewer butterflies seen by community scientists across the warming and drying landscapes of the American West

Warming autumns, fewer butterflies Many recent studies have revealed sweeping declines in insects over the past few decades. Butterflies are no exception. Forister et al. used three different datasets, collected by both experts and community scientists, and found that the number of butterflies has declined over the past 40 years. Although the drivers of decline are complex, the authors found that climate change—in particular, warmer months in the autumn—explain a large portion,…